Remembering My Birth On Memorial Day

Memorial Day. Family get togethers, celebrating school end and the beginning of summer, pools, picnics, wafting smells off the grill, American Flags lining the streets of towns across the USA...these are a few signs that Memorial Day is in full progress.

Our family never lost a soldier on foreign soil. They all returned safely to their families. Grandpa died last year, he served as a medic in WWII. My Uncle died years ago, he had been in the Navy. My great granddaddy died when I was very young, he served in WWI, although a German he served on the Allied side. These are just a few from my family tree.

Daddy was drafted right after he married mommy. And right after he married mommy, they were pregnant with me. They left the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and moved to El Paso, Texas out to Fort Bliss. Mommy was very sick with me. Her blood is AB negative, mine is A positive...there's something deadly about that combination. Remember, I am old...we're talking about the early seventies before all these wonderful advances in medicine.

There's a handy dandy shot today of course that fixes this problem, but before now...negative blood mommies with positive blood babies was a huge dilemma. The Fort Blissian Doctors informed mommy and daddy that their child would be born with no hands, no feet and possibly be born with mental retardation. They encouraged mommy and daddy to abort and never give birth to this child.

Did I ever mention how stubborn I am? I fought that decision tooth and nail. I kicked and screamed, gave my mommy the worse morning sickness I possibly could. I jumped at the sound of my daddy's voice as he sang GI Blues to me. I sucked my thumb and nestled in. I planted my feet sternly against my mommie's back. I dug in and planned to stay.

I was born, despite what the Fort Blissian doctors suggested. And as mommy and daddy held me my very first day, they looked into the deepest bluest eyes of a most perfectly formed little girl and gave her a most fitting name. Joely Ann. Formed from my daddy, Joe, and my mommy Paula Ann.

Flanders Field...bagpipes

Every year when Memorial Day comes into to view, certain images have been engraved onto my mind. I know no other way to pay homeage to those who volunteered or were drafted, but to give credit to a poem and song that already pays respect.

I distinctly remember being in the 5th grade, in Mrs. Wilson's social studies class, we were given the opportunity to memorize poems and do a collage. She assigned me; Flanders Field. I've always had the capacity to understand and express full emotion rather quickly. I silently read through my poem...I had listened to stories from my grandfather who served as a medic in WWII, in a mobile unit on the front lines. The poem became too real for me and I burst into tears...my teacher was horrified; I explained to her that my grandfather knows some of them that lie in Flanders Fields, he's shown me pictures...and now my heart is breaking.

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.