Wednesday, November 11, 2009

On Veterans Day

After Babycakes finally fell asleep tonight, I watched most of The Way We Get By, a documentary on the PBS show POV. It follows the daily lives of three elderly residents of Bangor, Maine who are troop greeters for the servicemen and women arriving and departing from the local airport. The film's subjects are among the last faces soldiers see before leaving for Iraq and Afghanistan, and the first faces they see upon their return. Over the last several years, they have greeted more than 900,000 troops. The film is beautiful and heartbreaking, and seems especially fitting on this Veterans Day.

***

This is Babycake's first Veterans Day, and he is named after his grandfathers, both of whom are veterans. My father served in Vietnam and my husband's father served in Vietnam and Desert Storm.