Let's Not Be Strangers

One of our middle schoolers started drama club recently and for their second meeting this week everyone was asked to give a monologue.  We were quite amused when he said he was doing a monologue with his friend but resisted the temptation to point out that this is a dialogue.  In the end his friend was not able to make it to drama club so in the spirit of the best of actors, he improvised.  He quickly scanned a book of ideas for monologues and gave what must have been a fabulous performance because the teacher was very impressed. 

He also came home with an observation; people like to imitate the British accent.  Apparently several of his peers, when giving their monologues had chosen to deliver them using a British accent.  We had a chuckle because he feels that he is “qualified” to assist in this area since his Stepmom is English and frequently is asked to perform British-isms at the dinner table.  Requests for “Say tomato, say banana…” are made with a certain level of frequency but the two the fellas like the most are “garage” and “missile”, the latter being the one that solicits the most amusement and pleas of “Say it again, say it again.”  Not only has our thespian started to master the differences in the accent, he has also noticed that there are different dialects and is working on those too.  Fairly soon he’ll be ready to pass as a Londoner in London! 

Amid all the fun, I started to think about the meaning and relevance of where we are born, our nationality, and patriotism, especially on this 10^th anniversary of 9/11.  My Dad once said that where you are born is purely an accident of birth and I find that to be true.  My older son was born in America and my younger son was born in England quite by chance; there was no plan or design or deep desire to have a child born in the motherland, it simply happened through life’s rich pattern of circumstances.  I have now lived almost half my life in America and it is home just as much as England is home, which means I appreciate the differences and also think we are bound together as people by things far greater than the soil where we are born.

I was in England when 9/11 traumatized this great nation and received the horrified phone calls at my parents’ house telling me to turn on the television.  It was as surreal there as it was here but I don’t think I can ever fully imagine what it was like to be in America that day and the subsequent days.  Friends and family have told me how stunned everyone was and how they felt they were barely functioning because everyone’s beliefs were shaken and there was no reasonable way to understand what had happened.  Arriving back two weeks later, I noticed it made us all kinder to each other in the following weeks and months as we realized that there are some fundamental values that we hold dear and they had been violated in the worst possible manner.

Yesterday I was checking out at the grocery store and a lady leaned over very quietly to the soldier in uniform and said, “Thank you for serving.”  Very humbly he quietly replied “Thank you for saying that.  No-one should forget and no-one should be forgotten.”  There are people everyday that are willing to die for this county, that are willing to put their lives on the line for me and my family.  To them and their families, I want to say thank you; the way we talk and the name of the town where we were born plays a role in who we are but ultimately it is the allegiance we have to one another and our way of life that supersedes all else.  We are strangers     but we are all in this together and there is nowhere I am prouder to live and work and raise a family.  Families I will never meet and thank have suffered the ultimate loss for my family and other servicemen and women and first responders live with that threat everyday.  Thank you, all of you…you inspire me to be kinder and more understanding everyday knowing that you are out there building a safe place for us to live together.