A FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY

For a few days now I have been filled with a slight uneasiness. Nothing I could put my finger on, just, you know, uneasy. Then I thought, "Of course, it is almost October." Sometime during the first week in October — my God, I can't believe I have forgotten the exact date — I left San Francisco on board an airliner bound for Vietnam.

The year was 1968, which makes this October the 40th anniversary of my return home, safe and slightly unsound. The intervening years from then to now have been filled with many moments, some wonderful, some not so wonderful, mostly just the ordinary stuff of a quotidian life.

For the first few years, the war was a constant presence in my head, a buzzing and humming that only very gradually subsided into the deeper recesses of memory. After a couple of decades, the memories were only allowed out on special occasions, my October anniversary syndrome being one of them, when I would permit myself to think about what was lost (and gained).

I have come to see that the greatest casualty of the war was my belief in the simplicity of things. When I meet or read about people who see the world in stark terms of black and white, I envy them their certitude.

For me, an unfortunate son of an unfortunate war, patriotism is no simple matter. For me, every choice has meaning, because I know that put in the wrong set of circumstances we are all of us capable of doing the unthinkable. So I follow the wisdom of the Crow: Everything matters.

I think we call this a loss of innocence. Whatever it is, you can't just walk away from it. For the other great thing I have come to understand is that the war follows you home. You can never turn your back on it, because it never stops trying to wound or kill you.

Think about this the next time you are asked to send our young people off to war. Understand that you are condemning them to a world that will never completely release them from its thrall. Then ask yourself, "Is it really that important?"

September 24, 2009

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IN QUOTES

"Earth has scarcely an acre that does not remind us of actions that have long preceded our own, and its clustering tombstones loom up like reefs of the eternal shore, to show us where so many human barks have struck and gone down."

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

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