My parents moved my three brothers, my sister and myself out of Brooklyn to a small town about 50 miles northwest of the City when I was in elementary school. It was a nervy move. They were in their 20s, didn’t have a lot of money and knew no one except my father’s brother and his family who bought half of the lot on the side of what was then, more than 35 years ago, a rather treacherous road that was too steep for the school bus to climb. My father built the house himself, dividing his time between a small trailer perched on the side of the mountain, the firehouse where he worked and our home.
I both loved and hated growing up in Warwick. In fact, I preferring telling people that I was from Brooklyn rather than admit that I was from “upstate” or lived in “the country.” Of course, anyone in New York who actually lives “upstate” would laugh at the assertion that this bedroom community where many commute to New York every day is “the country.” More like a quaint rural suburb.
Warwick is one of those towns that is just far enough away from the highway that it escaped strip mall development. There are a handful of traffic lights and one fast food joint. There are antique shops and outdoor cafes and a Village Green where banned skateboarders rebel by skating there anyway until the police come by and shoo them away. I left this place for about a decade before returning to get divorced and try to begin my life again in the 1990s. Since then I’ve wandered a town or two away in one direction or another, but can’t help but finally accept that Warwick has–after all of my complaining about it being too small, too boring and too slow–become my home.
And this weekend is one of the reasons why.
In the midst of the cook-outs and pool parties, Memorial Day is marked in Warwick with an old-school, small-town parade. The high school band leads rows of uniformed veterans and active duty men and women, firefighters and scouts – boy and girl – down main street to a small veterans cemetery where the mayor, an eagle scout and one or more County or State representatives give speeches under thick branched oaks that predate the Revolutionary War soldiers that lie in the ground there. Men and women in their 80s and 90s smile and wave from ribbon-draped convertibles wearing VFW and VFW Ladies Auxiliary uniforms while crowds of people who line the streets cheer and wave back.
I have attended this parade every year since my oldest children, now 19 and 20, were in a tandem stroller. There is something about walking with these people who fought and watched their friends and comrades die for a country that, for its (often considerable) faults, my country. As curved-back women and their frail looking husbands put their hands over their hearts and recite the national anthem, I can see that with the passing of the Greatest Generation there is a passing of an era. And, without intention, when fatigue-clad vets lift their rifles and shoot off a few rounds before a single horn plays taps, I am moved – often to tears.
So, it is Memorial Day weekend. The first weekend of summer. A time for fun and family. It is also a time for us, regardless of our politics, to remember those who fought and died for their country and those who continue to fight as we speak. And, while it is a different kind of memorial, I will also remember my parents who were buried next to one another in a veterans cemetery three weeks apart last year – an adventurous couple who sacrificed much for the good of their children and who will be missed at the parade this Monday.
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