Yesterday standing around in Seaview Park on the cold frozen snow talking to a couple of other dog owners while our pups romped around, we saw a navy ship coming into the Halifax Harbour. It seemed all the passengers were standing on the deck eager to pull into the dock. It was very tender sight. The two other people said they were carrying the sailors home for Christmas. The servicemen knew they’d be leaving again soon, they said, going back to the war zone. But then, one person said, they knew when they signed up that’s the way it would be.
I very proudly told them my daughter has a Support Peace ribbon on her car (I think it’s a purple one). Both the other (freezing) dog owners seemed unimpressed. Assumed, it seemed, that we all support peace so why say it.
But from what I have heard on the radio, those servicemen and women who signed up thought they were going on a peacekeeping mission. Not going to war. They support peace.
How many reminders does it take?
The ribbon is blue, actually...
And a lot of the reason we have it on our car is to be a small counter-voice to the nearly ubiquitous Support Our Troops yellow ribbons that dot the New Jersey auto landscape. It was a shock when we moved here to see that, but now I understand it a bit better. These are people who stood on Eagle Rock Reservation's NYC outlook and watched the towers go down that morning, and then stood there in mourning all day and into the night. And nearly everyone around here knew people who died that day.
Some people respond in anger, mistakenly thinking the invasion of Iraq actually has something to do with fighting the terrorists. Others don't. But the ones that do, well, I don't agree with them, but I respect them more than I might if they lived in, say, Kansas and never dealt with the tragedy up close. Nevertheless, we put the peace banner on our car, a way of saying, "There are other ways to see this." What I really wanted was a ribbon saying "Support Our Troops -- Send Them Home." But we haven't been able to find one.
Posted by: Tamar at December 8, 2007 12:11 PMThanks, Tamar. You say it so much better than I did.
Posted by: Leya at December 8, 2007 10:03 PM