Freedom

It’s Memorial Day. Not only am I grateful for a desperately needed three-day weekend, and all the magnificent moments with family and loved ones that resulted, but I’m unspeakably grateful for the sacrifice that allowed me to have this day. I’m unbelievably grateful that the new G.I. Bill passed the House and Senate overwhelmingly, hopefully with a veto-proof majority that will override the gutless scrawl of the pen that the chicken-hawk in charge will apply to the bill. I’m unbelievably grateful that I have the freedom to drink Bud Light in the afternoon of this day and eat watermelon and strawberries and go to the beach if I choose. I’m unbelievably grateful that I can sit at home and devour my volumes of the late grate Mike Royko, who railed so passionately and presciently against another pointless war forty years and many thousands of miles away that I could swear I was still reading his current columns in syndication.

I didn’t make the sacrifices that allowed me this freedom: somebody else did, somebody else’s’ son and brother and daughter and sister. I don’t take that for granted, not for one second.

And beyond all that, it’s still a great day and a great weekend. We don’t have two dimes to rub together, and the nickels we are rubbing together were transferred out of savings. But we have a fridge full of food and drink, a fifth anniversary trip in a few weeks and a hell of a lot of love on both sides of this great country. And with that, I’m untouchable.