11/11/11/18

Growing up, I often thought my family was a little out of step. For instance, the rest of the country celebrated Veteran's Day on this date, and had since 1954. In our house, the holiday was still known as Armistice Day, the day for honoring veterans of World War I first observed in 1919 and established as a national holiday in 1938. My mother was the daughter of a doughboy, and so grew up with her father's recollections of the Great War, as World War I was then known, and with public remembrances of those who served in it. In one of these remembrances, the children in her school classes would all stand up at 11:00 AM on November 11 and silently face eastward for one minute, commemorating the signing of the armistice ending the war at that time and date in a railroad car at Compiègne, France.

Of course, before my mother was long into her teens, another, greater war came along. Congress eventually dedicated November 11th to remembering all veterans. The change is surely appropriate, though by shifting the focus from particular historical events to a kind of trans-historic heroic character, it makes obsolete the very focused rituals of remembrance that my mother knew. People no longer recall and re-enter a decisive moment, but think of those who have cycled in and out of wars over the centuries. I don't know if this is a gain or a loss, but in my house, it was beside the point. The day was still Armistice day, and at 11:00 on November 11th, my mother would stand and face the east for one minute. That's what she said anyway, and on the few occasions this date fell on a weekend when I was home from school, I saw her do it myself. And at least a couple times, I joined her. I wasn't quite sure what it was about, but I did sense that somewhere in the gesture was a family connection to history. Real history, like you read about, not the (usually unfortunate) history of remote and often deceased relatives told and retold during summer nights on my grandmother's porch.

My ideas of what history does and doesn't count have shifted a bit over the years. I wish I'd paid better attention to some of those family stories, or heard them when I was a bit older and might have understood them better. Beyond my parents, and very sketchy acquaintaince with my grandparents, I don't have much of a sense of my roots. While this lack isn't especially painful, it is there. So when I remember, or when I'm not busy with something I can't set aside, I try to take a minute at 11:00 on the 11th of November to face the east quietly. Not so much for reasons of war or peace or national pride, but to remember who I came from, and where, in time and place, they came from. An arcane private ritual, I'll admit, but as a fly fisherman, I'm predisposed to those anyway.

Tags: [Family];[Veteran's Day]