Suby, reading by iPad light in our tent, read “one more poem” tonight before bed: ”Mindful” by Mary Oliver.

It’s a poem she and I have shared from time to time.

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

We toured Omaha Beach today and, in our own way, tried to understand what happened there in June of 1944.

In preparation for today’s walk, we’ve been listening to Stephen Ambrose read portions of his book “D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II.”

This excerpt was particularly moving:

“For all that American industrial brawn and organizational ability could do, for all that the British and Canadians and all other allies could contribute, for all the plans and preparations, for all the brilliance of the generals, in the end, success or failure in Operation Overlord came down to a relatively small number of junior officers, non-coms, and privates or seamen in the American, British, and Canadian armies, navies, air forces, and coast guards. If the paratroopers and glider-born troops cowered behind hedgerows or hid out in barns rather than actively seeking out the enemy, if the coxswains did not drive their landing craft ashore but instead out of fear of enemy fire dropped the ramps in too deep water, if the men at the beaches dug in behind the sea wall, if the non-coms and junior officers up and over the sea wall to move inland in the face of enemy fire, why then the most thoroughly-planned offensive in military history, an offensive supported by incredible amounts of naval firepower, bombs, and rockets, would fail.”

“It all came down to a bunch of eighteen- to twenty-eight-year-olds. They were magnificently trained and equipped and supported, but only a few of them had ever been in combat. Only a few had ever killed or seen a buddy killed. … They had never heard a shot fired in anger. They were citizen soldiers, not professionals.”

…

“It’s … the young men born in the false prosperity of the 1920s and brought up in the bitter realities of the Great Depression of the 1930s that this story is about. The literature they read as youngsters was anti-war, cynical, portraying patriots as suckers, slackers as heroes.”

“None of them wanted to be part of another war. They wanted to be throwing baseballs, not hand grenades, shooting 22s at rabbits not M1s at other young men. But when the test came, when freedom had to be fought for or abandoned, they fought. They were the soldiers of democracy. They were the men of D-Day and to them we owe our freedom.”

S has been reading a chapter of “Adam of the Road” to the boys each night before bed. She read an additional chapter this morning at the beginning of our “rest” day inside the tent. The story took a tough turn when something happened to Bayard, the warrior horse prized by Adam and his minstrel father.

Our boys have a great prize in their mother – whose gift of a deep heart surfaces during the emotional chapter. Please listen below.