Day 224: This week of ambling along Memory Lane has taken me past minty memories, lighthouse memories, neighborly memories , bookish memories, grown son memories, and some tropical memories in the making.
My dad flew all over the world at the end of World War II. He didn’t talk about it much, except to tell a few stories here and there. My brother gave Dad a world globe with a pin in all the places he’d been. There were a lot of pins. Most of the clues I saw of these distant places were the gifts he’d brought home to Mom. She would show them to me and describe the land where they came from.
When Dad was flying home to Idaho at the end of his service, he said to the soldier next to him, “This is the last flight I will ever make.” It was true. Although he was only in his twenties and died in his eighties, he never flew again. From then on, it was the car on a country road or a tractor in a field for him.
Tomorrow we will fly in a helicopter to better see Kauai, and I’ll be thinking about my dad and his view of the war-torn world. How blessed I am to see the world through eyes of peace.
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