Flower Friday : : Christmas Rose.

I woke up at 3am thinking of Lady Findhorn accompanying her Sandy to his final resting place today.  I was glad to read from several accounts that he received the sendoff he so richly deserved. I was sorry we couldn't be there but we had so many wonderful times together with those two, that the memories  will last me for the  rest of my life.  

Today is the 77th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. My father and my mother were both there. My dad was in the Navy and was  stationed at Pearl Harbor . My parents had moved numerous times times since he was stationed there. Mom (she was the storyteller) said they had moved just about once a month and that the Navy always moved them .        There was a well memorized story about how the Navy packed up opened boxes of tapioca and ashtrays complete with cigarette butts each time they moved. My father commanded a net tender which looked after the submarine nets across the mouth of Pearl Harbor. They were relative newlyweds and although their lives in Los Angeles had been completely disrupted when the war started and my father was commissioned, I think they really loved their life in Hawaii, which was a very different place in 1940.

On the morning of December 7th. my mother went to pick up my father at Pearl Harbor. The guards at the gate told my mother that there was going to be target practice over the bay and she could pull over and watch if she wanted. She did and was impressed by the number of planes which flew over the harbor and dropped what she thought were very realistic looking bombs.

She was not wrong. They were real and she and my father were both witness to 'the date that will live in infamy'. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor destroyed eight battleships, 300 airplanes and killed over two thousand sailors, and brought the United States into tWorld War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war the following day.

We heard the story of my parents' experience that day many times, but most of it was from my mother. To this day, I do not know where my father was or what he was doing. I will never know the answer s to my questions which I never thought to ask when he was still alive to answer them. He never spoke of it. My mother sheltered under a steam shovel bucket until it was safe for her to leave and didn't know where my father was for days....

I always think of my father on December 7th, even if I don't always remember his birthday. I thought the dark red roses still blooming in the garden were an appropriate flower for the day....

In a touching reminder that life goes  goes on, we got word from son Matthew that his wife's brother's wife  just gave birth to a son. Congratulations to Zac and Lindsay on the birth of their son, Cyrus.