As we drove to the science museum on Monday morning for a playdate with Grayson, Alice noticed the fleet of road construction machines were all inert.
"Mommy, why are all the machines stopped?" Normally when we drive by on Saturdays, they are all working.
"Well, Alice, today is a government holiday, Memorial Day, so all the workers are having stay-home days too."
"What's memorial day for?"
Suddenly, I realized that to answer this question I have to explain war, soldiers, and death to my daughter who is just shy of five years old. We teach her a lot, but we've avoided things like this. I sigh. I just finished teaching All Quiet on the Western Front about WWI, so I had been immersed in the pointlessness of war and the terrible toll it takes on the soldiers for the past month and couldn't muster a patriotic or simplistic answer. Plus, at my most cynical, I think memorial day is just a way to throw around emotive words like glory, honor, sacrifice and hero, that will keep the people thinking fondly of war so that we will happily march off to the next one.
But Alice was waiting for an answer. So I bungled around a bit, and said something like, "Some people's job is to go where the government tells them to and they have to fight the bad guys there. Like Izzy's dad--he's a soldier. It's his job to go where the government tells him to go and try to solve the problems there. Right now he's in another country doing what our government tells him to do. But because soldiers are fighting, sometimes they die. So Memorial Day is a special day to remember all of those people who fought in wars and died."
"So, all the construction workers are dead?"
"No, no. Everybody just has the day off work to think about and remember the service members who fought in the wars."
It took a while, but I think eventually we got it sorted out. Then Alice asked, "Mom, is Izzy's dad dead?"
"No, no, he's fine. He's very good at his job." I'd just had a conversation with Izzy's mom when we were at Grayson's birthday party, about how she sleeps at night while her husband is stationed in Afghanistan, and she said, "You just can't go there. I just don't think about it. He loves his job."
The science museum was near the capitol building where a little memorial day ceremony was taking place. As we stopped at a light, a man in uniform crossed the street in front of us. Alice asked what he was, and I said he was a service member going to the ceremony. She said she thought he looked like a statue. I said, "Yes, there are a lot of statues of soldiers. But this guy is moving. Statues don't move."
We had a great time at the science museum, and back home that evening the kids had a lot of fun playing in the pool and in the rain. At end of day Alice said, "Mom, I think the government gave everybody a memorial day holiday so the weekend would be longer and the week would be shorter and everybody would be happier."
