It always brings to mind the years of the 60's and the Vietnam war.
My oldest brother was drafted into the army and absolutely had to go. We were not rich and there was no other way out for him. His fate was forced removal to Vietnam.
My other brother enlisted into the Marines. He however, did not have to go thru forced removal to Vietnam because our other brother was already there and they didn't send two brothers at the same time. They were just a year apart in age.
Every time Veteran's Day rolls around I always revert back to that time in the 60's. I was in the middle of a war of what my family was going thru and at the same time my brothers forced removal put upon them, into two different scenes of war, the jungles of Vietnam and being stateside in California.
That left me at home with a younger sister, a raging alcoholic father and a mother that had to work to provide for the family. My father worked too but wages were so low it took two pay checks to provide for what little we had.
I was a protector most evenings and nights for my sister and myself while my mother worked. She didn't have a choice in shifts, at the local plastics factory, is how I want to remember it. A raging alcoholic father ranting and raving threatening both of us most of the time. I did the best I could, to watch out and console her until our mother would return sometime around midnight.
I was somewhere around 14 or 15 years of age. I was put in a position of being an adult dealing with an absolute impossible situation and to this day I have no idea how we got thru it. I guess by help of neighborhood kids we hung out with. When it got so bad we could spend time at their house until our mom would get home.
I felt abandoned by my brothers. Which I have told my Marine brother in the past couple of weeks. How dare the damn government take them away from their family when our father was dealing with his own personal historical trauma and in turn made it our war too. Especially mine, I felt.
So, you'll have to excuse me if I don't have such warm fuzzy feelings about Veteran's Day.
Damn the government for the Vietnam war. They created a forced removal and relocation of my brothers and took them away, when they should have been protectors for my sister and myself, their family.
Instead they went to a government war that killed thousands and we still lost the damn thing in the end.
And now I wear Asics shoes made in Vietnam which my Marine brother pointed out to me a couple of weeks ago, He saw a shoe box where my husband keeps his treadmill shoes and he said "look at that, they're made in Vietnam."
I'll be damn I hadn't noticed that before. I wear them too. Actually they've been the most comfortable sport shoe that I have found. Wow, funny how life has a way of working out.
Below is a video from Woodstock. This how I remember Veteran's Day.
