American Cemetery at Omaha Beach in Normandy, France
Seems wrong, but of the places I've been, this is a favorite (?). It is a quiet, hallowed garden that screams & haunts & enriches & stirs, and that is special.
Back in the Mitten when Ry was small, we discussed the US flag flying at half staff each time a Michigan soldier dies in service. Her youthful eyes were never too cataracted by life to miss flags flying somber instead of proud. "Mom, another soldier died." When US casualties in Iraq hit 1,000, we sighed, "Horrible." Today the total is over 4,000.
Friday night we visited Bangkok for Allie's ortho visit. Her doctor is in a lovely, new shopping mall on edge of town, not near city center's protests. It mostly felt business as usual with affluent Thais & occasional foreigners shopping, eating, and i-testing as if nothing was failing just blocks away. Yet my mind couldn't help drifting to the nearby redzone where 1 person died earlier that day and 1 the previous night.
Get home, log in, learn 5 died that evening just a couple kilometers from where Al's braces were rewired to fix "imperfect" teeth and we had our Japanese food fix. Saturday night brought more deaths and now Monday morn... 35 lives reported lost in the past 3 days.
Living so close to this tragedy while in our own safe & privileged expat world is boggling. I feel guilty planning for our family's birthday trifecta this weekend, celebrating life while our new neighbors are losing theirs... in a fight with their government!!!
Peace to all neighborhoods!
