Honoring the sacrifice of many

Yesterday we went to a service at Denver’s Fort Logan National Cemetery in honor of Memorial Day. It was the first time I had ever been to such a service on Memorial Day. In the past the day has meant family barbecues, the Bolder Boulder (an annual 10K race in Boulder) and picnics in the mountains. Memorial Day meant more to me this year. Mike and I spent last Memorial Day in Normandy, France, touring the D-Day beaches and wandering through the American cemetery above Omaha Beach. Somehow, after seeing that, the sacrifice of those who have served -- and continue to serve -- our country is more meaningful to us. We wanted to commemorate Memorial Day this year in the way, however small on our part, it was meant to be commemorated.

The service at Fort Logan was touching. Several thousand people attended, one of the largest crowds that had ever gathered for the Memorial Day service at the cemetery. I talked to a woman sitting behind me whose husband served in the Army during World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He died about 10 years ago and is buried at Fort Logan. We also saw a friend at the service, a Marine who served in World War II. He lost his wife a few years ago, and she’s buried at Fort Logan.

Several dozen people at the service rose to their feet when asked to stand in honor of a loved one who had served in the military and had died since last Memorial Day. (The local media took that to mean all of those people lost loved ones in Iraq or Afghanistan, but those in attendance represented many current and former service members who had died in the last year, not just those serving in the current conflict.)

I wanted to take some flowers to place somewhere at Fort Logan, where 90,000 servicemen, servicewomen and their families are buried. Before the service I picked up a bunch of white carnations at the grocery store, not knowing exactly where they’d end up. I asked God to show us where to put them. As we walked through the cemetery, two gravestones caught my attention. One of the gravestones said, “Well done my good and faithful servant,” a reference to a story Jesus tells in Matthew 25. I split up the carnations and put half in front of that gravestone.

The other gravestone said, “A man after God’s own heart,” a reference to ancient Israel’s King David but a sentiment a lot of believers wish to have said about them. A woman was kneeling and crying before the second gravestone. I approached her, told her the words on the gravestone touched us and asked if we could place some flowers before it. She smiled through her tears. ‘Daddy would love that,” she said. I looked at the dates on the gravestone. The woman’s father had just died last fall. This was her first Memorial Day without him, and she was obviously struggling.

I can only hope our small gesture of placing a few white carnations at the foot of his gravestone gave her a little bit of comfort on a difficult day.

What a difference a few months can make

My husband and I were feeling pretty lucky when we went to San Francisco in March and saw gas prices there at about $3.30 per gallon. Now we're the glum ones. Gas prices in our neighborhood just hit about $3.25 per gallon. Back in March, they were about $2.75. In January, a gallon cost $1.99.

Amazing what a difference a few months can make.

The lowest gas prices in the San Francisco area today (outside the city, mind you) are not much higher than they are here -- about $3.40. In the city they've hit $3.75. One gas station is charging $4.33! Click on this link for more: http://www.sanfrangasprices.com.

I never thought I'd see the day when gas in Denver is more expensive than gas in New York City. Gas prices in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, etc. are about $3.10. In the heart of the city they're about $3.30. Check out this link for more info: http://www.newyorkgasprices.com.

It's getting out of control. Both Mike and I drive little Nissan Sentras. It now costs us $40 to fill up our 12-gallon tanks.

I guess we can still consider ourselves lucky. We don't drive the SUVs most of our neighbors drive.

The irony is that after Denver got hit with a few big snowstorms this winter, the sales of SUVs skyrocketed at local car dealerships. That's back when gas prices had decreased, and the immediacy of driving through snow for a few weeks outweighed the reality that gas would increase again in a few months.

I wonder if many of those SUV owners are now regretting their decision to trade in their front-wheel drives -- which perform great in the snow; we get around fine in ours -- for gas-guzzling four-wheel drives that are becoming too expensive to fill up.

Wanderlust

I came to the realization today that I think I'm grieving a bit. A year ago this coming Sunday, my husband Mike and I left on a two-week trip to Europe. We spent a week in England and a week in France. We had a great time, met some great people, took lots of photos and brought home some wonderful memories. (One photo posted here shows us and Big Ben in London. The other photo is of us at Mont Saint Michel, an abbey on a tiny island off the coast of northern France.) I want to go overseas again. And I guess I'm a little sad.

I've gotten this way around the one-year anniversary of other overseas trips I've taken. At age 17 and right out of high school, I spent a month in France with a French family, my first journey overseas. Other teenagers save up their money to buy clothes and cars. I saved the money I made working at a child-care center to go to France. I had taken six years of French at the time and immersed myself in the language and the culture. The night before I returned home, I had a conversation with an American woman in Paris and realized it had been a whole month since I'd spoken more than a few words in English. (My "French father,"a school teacher by vocation, was a stickler for my speaking French all the time and would critique me every time I opened my mouth. It was annoying at the time, but I learned a lot.) Those few weeks away taught me that I could not only survive in another land and another culture, but I could actually thrive and enjoy it.

Six years ago I spent three months in India. It was such a significant experience in my life and changed me so deeply, I saw everything for the year or so after I returned through "India glasses." I marked all the month anniversaries of returning from India and could hardly believe it when one year, two years, then three and four years passed since the experience. Certain things still bring me back there, like the taste of curry and the smell of incense. On the hottest of our summer days when it gets above 100 degrees, I remind myself it could be worse. On our last day in India, we drove about six hours in a non-air-conditioned car to the Taj Mahal. The temperature reached 120 degrees that day. I drank three full liters of water and never went to the bathroom -- I sweated it all out.

About a year after I returned from India, I went to Vietnam on a humanitarian mission trip to bring medical care to orphanages and rural communites. That experience was only two weeks long, but I still taste, smell or hear certain things that remind me of my time there. I remember the laughter and faces of the orphan children who stole my heart. For one afternoon in Ho Chi Minh City (we know it as Saigon), I got to hold babies with HIV and AIDS in my arms. Few of them ever get any affection. Most of them probably ended up dying. I get tears in my eyes remembering their faces.

One particular song -- Michael Card's "I Will Bring You Home" -- I played over and over again on my portable CD player after I and the group I was with witnessed a terrible tragedy on a street outside Hanoi. A dump truck caught a man's bicycle wheel and flew him into the air, smashing him to pieces. It was such a violent sight, many of us were emotionally shaken. We drove back by the accident site a few hours later, after the sun had set, and many people had gathered in a candlelight vigil for the man. I listen to that Michael Card song today, and it brings me back to that moment in Vietnam.

Last year in England and France, Mike and I walked about 10 miles a day and came back about 10 pounds lighter. We became masters of packing -- we wore backbacks and refused to wheel anything around. Our primary modes of transporation were subways and trains. I brushed up on my French (Mike did, too -- he took some high school French) and felt in many ways like I'd come home. All the memories of my first trip to France when I was 17 came flooding back. In England we were awestruck by St. Paul's Cathedral in London, the most beautiful church I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of churches in all my travels. We were amazed by Oxford, the tradition and high standards of which makes our university system seem like elementary school. We fell in love with Normandy and its people as we for the first time learned about the sacrifices of American, British and Canadian soldiers during the invasion of Normandy in 1944. Paris, the last stop on our journey, was kind of a tough place for us. People rave about its charm, but we preferred Normandy.

These are the memories I'm pondering this week. We've talked about going back to Normandy and going to Belgium, too. We've also talked about visiting some friends of Mike's in the Czech Republic. Who knows what we'll end up doing? All I have is the memories of these experiences -- and the joy of having been to such amazing places with people I'll never forget.

Shopping woes

I went shopping fthis weekend for clothes for the first time in a while. I usually piecemeal my shopping together -- a pair of pants or a shirt there, shoes and a handbag there. So it's not that often I look for quite a few things in one day. What I learned from my experience this weekend: I'm getting old.

I had the hardest time finding anything I liked this weekend. Many clothing stores cater to the "junior" crowd -- those anywhere between the ages of 13 and 25. I'm 34, and already I'm hopelessly out of date. Several of my friends who are my age dress what I call "young" -- hipster jeans, baby-doll shirts, chunky beaded necklaces that are now all the rage. Sure, they look like they're in their mid-20s, but here's the thing: I don't really want to look younger. I don't want to look older, either. I just want to look like me.

At the end of my fourth-grade year many years ago, my teacher handed out awards. I got the "best-dressed" award. I developed my taste in clothes from my mom, who used to buy me plaid skirts and blazers, slacks and sweaters. I looked a lot like a Catholic schoolgirl back in fourth grade. Since then, I've had a classic preference in clothing. I like simple stuff -- tailored pants and jackets, tasteful shirts, scarves, basic shoes. Nothing fancy, just professional, I guess.

I had a momentary lapse in clothing judgment this weekend and tried on some of the "young" stuff. The baby-doll shirts left me feeling exposed. Anything beyond a basic V-neck
feels a little bit too revealing to me. The hipster pants are too tight to be comfortable. The chunky beaded necklaces just aren't me.

I opted for the a few items at the Ann Taylor outlet store -- not as expensive as the "real" Ann Taylor, but more than I would have spent on some of the trendier stuff at other stores. I walked away happy, feeling like I'd been true to myself. I went home, tried everything on again and decided I didn't care about being up on the latest trends. Besides, the trendy stuff won't last long. I'd have to give it all away to Goodwill in six months and go shopping again to get the latest and greatest. (The photo above, by the way, is not a picture of what I bought this weekend. It's a photo I found on e-bay of "trendy" clothes a teenage girl is trying to sell.)

My preference for the timeless, for the classic pieces that will still be around no matter how styles change, started when I was 9 years old. And you know what? I think if my fourth-grade teacher could see me now, she'd still give me the best-dressed award.

Sports talk

When my husband Mike and I first started dating, many of my girlfriends (and others) asked me whether Mike is a sports fanatic. The question was a fair one. Most men like sports, and on top of that Mike is a sports broadcaster. My friends naturally assumed that he'd be obsessed with sports, maybe even more obsessed than most men are thought to be.

So people were surprised when I said, "No, Mike likes sports, but I don't think he's obsessed with them." He's immersed in sports talk all day long for his job. Often the last thing he wants to do is come home, plop himself in front of the TV and engage in sports all night long. In the three years we've been married, I have to admit I've learned quite a lot about sports. Mike WILL watch about any sport on television, including bowling and the "sport" that I consider a joke-- the world championship poker series. So while he watches sports, I occasionally watch too and start asking questions.

Before I explain what I've learned from Mike, I have to give a bit of background: I grew up with two brothers and a dad who, not surprisingly, loved sports. I remember shouting to get my dad's attention while he sat in his basement hideaway reading -- you guessed it -- Sports Illustrated while a basketball game blared on the TV in front of him. My dad never had the patience to teach me much about the rules of his favorite sports. My younger brother Jim was the one who taught me the ins and outs of football. I was about 12, and he was an 8-year-old teaching me about football. Because I understood it, football became my favorite sport to watch. I understand what first downs are, what offsides and holding mean, the significance of a fourth-and-goal play. I don't know all the positions the players on the field play, but I get the basics. I can sit down and genuinely enjoy a game.

This winter Mike did the radio play-by-play for the University of Colorado women's basketball games. I attended several games with him -- even went on a road trip to my alma mater -- and thus learned a lot about basketball, the sport that moves so fast it's hard to keep up with. I've come to enjoy college basketball, particularly women's basketball. College hoops are much more competitive than the NBA, which is so slow it looks like the players are just standing around waiting for someone to CARE and actually make a play. Their skill level is incredible when they actually engage in the game, but otherwise the players look way too nonchalant for me to get into what's happening. I'm sorry, but the occasional dunk shot isn't enough to get me that excited.

Now we're into baseball season, and every night as Mike watches his Colorado Rockies -- the team everyone loves to hate in Denver, but Mike still believes in them -- I ask questions. I've learned what the "hole" is between the shortstop and third base. Last Sunday we attended our first Rockies game of the season, the game where Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki made the 13th-ever unassisted triple play in Major League history. Before that game, someone would have said "unassisted triple play," and I would have said, "What?" I learned tonight that when a pitcher hits a batter with a ball (thus resulting in an automatic walk), the batter never rubs the spot where the 90-plus mile-an-hour ball hit him. I mean, that hit had to have hurt. But I guess it's a macho thing not to show it did. I've learned enough about baseball in the first month of this year's season that I'm beginning to think of it as the most fascinating sport of all of them. "Everything means something in baseball, from the scoring to what happens on the field," Mike tells me. It's fun to be curious and figure out what everything means.

One of these days maybe Mike will get me into what he IS obsessed about -- fantasy baseball. His fantasy baseball teams -- all four of them -- are why Mike watches way more sports on TV in the spring and summer than any other time of the year. I asked him tonight why he watches so much baseball. I assumed he liked it better than football or basketball. "Because there's nothing else to do in the summer," he said. Short pause. "No, it's probably because of my fantasy teams." And since in baseball, everything means something, every pitch, every hit, every run, every everything will affect Mike's fantasy teams one way or another. Mike is competitive; he likes to keep track of statistics, and he likes to win -- thus, the fantasy teams are such a kick for him.

Before Mike and I got married, a friend of mine gave me some good advice: "Since Mike's job is about sports and he likes sports, you ought to get into them too." At first I was like, "What?" Now I understand what she meant. A lot of my girlfriends complain that their husbands are so into sports. They complain that it captivates too much of their time and energy. I figure there are a lot worse things they could be into. There are also a lot worse things on television than sports. I still can't get into those dumb poker matches -- talk about egomaniacs; the poker players are the worst -- but I'd rather watch them than some of the other stuff on TV, including many of the shows that attract primarily a female audience.

Mike says the difference between me and other women is that I have a genuine curiosity about sports. The truth is I have a genuine curiosity about him, what he thinks, what makes him tick, why he likes certain things and dislikes others. That's why I'll continue to sit with him, let him turn on a game and start asking questions. It doesn't take long for me to start enjoying it as much as he does.