Something to Remember on Memorial Day: Sovereignty and Safety Don’t Come Cheap

In other countries while little girls are shot on their way to school and others are being kidnapped and sold, we, Americans, send our children to safe and secure bus stops only to complain they aren’t close enough to our homes.

In other countries where it is illegal to educate women, I sit here researching and writing papers for my doctoral program, advanced education readily available to me and any other female who wants to attend graduate school in this country.

In far away places where children are kidnapped and forced into a life as child soldiers, my 5-year-old daughter sleeps in a queen-sized bed, safe. She will wake and we will go to the pool and play outside, oblivious of the suffering other children endure around the world.

My father told me a story once of coming home from war, the mud from Vietnam still caked on his boots. He landed in California somewhere and was met with protests and chants condemning him for fighting.

But that’s just it, isn’t it? My father and his father and other fathers, sons, mothers and daughters are fighting for our right to condemn a vet, to condemn the government, to sleep safely, to speak freely and to live sovereignly.

Sovereignty doesn’t come cheap; it is paid for with young American lives.

As an educator I saw high school students get off the school bus in the morning wearing shinny shoes, perfectly pressed shirts, badges and buttons and ribbons dangling from their lapels, their JROTC uniforms worn with pride. These students, often underprivileged minorities, were eager to fight for a country that isn’t always so kind to them.

I catch my breath every year when I see many of those students recruited, enlisted and sent off to fight in foreign places – teenagers with guns fighting for my daughter’s safety.

It isn’t until I turn on the TV and see turmoil in Egypt or kidnappings in Nigeria or bombs exploding in Ukraine that I take a deep breath in gratitude because I am an American and get to experience all of the perks that come with being part of this nation. I take it for granted most days.

I complain about injustices and write about inequalities. I go on TV and radio and condemn systems with which I don’t agree – my words move freely, traveling through airwaves and Internet cables. I do this without fear or worry because people I don’t even know put on the uniform and fight for my right to be exactly who I want to be. 

My daughter and other children can attend school, and cross the street and eat hot dogs on Memorial day, a day we celebrate with tiny American flags and discounted paper plates and charcoal.

I know my gratitude cannot begin to express the sacrifice members of the United States Military have bore; but I will say it anyway. To our unique American sons and daughters who have come home on a plane with the flag draped over their coffins, to their grief stricken families, and to those who have come home, still alive, but with the images of war branded in their observances…Thank you.