Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

Memorial Day, to me, is peonies. Oh, I know In Flander’s Field the poppies grow/ between the crosses row on row but to a Long Island born-and-bred girl, peonies, lush and heavy with satin petals, bespeak Memorial Day.

We’d cut the heavy blossoms, crawling with ants, sprinkling pollen on our young fingers, for the soldiers’ graves. There were miles of them. Many graves had peony bushes planted and blooming on them, but to those dead soldiers whose families were remiss, or missing, we gave our backyard peonies set in mayonnaise jars we’d saved up all winter.

Peonies were, to a young girl, the ballgowns of flowers. They promised life and love and romantic adventures and endless possibilities and the coursing of warm blood in supple limbs. Peonies were the very rhythm of life.

And those cold dead soldiers could have none of it. Because some old man decided that his space in life was threatened, he sent a young man into war. He condemned that young man to die, to never caress a peony or his baby’s warm tummy. That young man never got to kiss his mother’s aged cheek, buy an armful of flowers for the nice lady next door, or even lie on the grass and watch a line of ants make their way homeward.

On Memorial Day, we can only remember the soldiers killed in old men’s wars. The other days of the year, can’t we stop those old men from killing young men?