The Thread

In the fabric of my life, the thread doesn’t need to be pulled-through too far to see a line of soldiers...stitched through time - for reasons noble and abstract. Some service mandated - others by a call roiled-up beyond total understanding.

At a time when many families’ histories were unraveling due to war and pestilence, in the small Italian village of my father’s birth, Archangelo, my father’s - father was among the dead - or so it was assumed. But only pieces of him had passed as he laid-bare in a prisoner of war camp in Northern Africa.

Not so many years later...in a new country with hopes of safety from disease, war, and uncertainty , Archangelo saw his sons - one, two, three, four - be pulled into the ranks for a country new in their blood but somehow steeped in their souls.

My own Brother, in the 1960’s, before the universe pivoted him back home, wore the procurement of blue.

And then a time of stillness...as the needle and thread weaving my family’s military tapestry sat un-changed.

Until the year 2013...

When, into the fold, came a Marine - who married my daughter and gave me grandchild...one...two...three.

In September, 2016, in our small town of Canal Winchester, Ohio...I walked into an exhibit, The Eyes of Freedom, and I found myself unraveling. Tears and aching beyond understanding - shredding some part of my soul. My grandchildren’s father, was a member of Lima Company. The Eyes of Freedom - a tribute to the fallen Marines of 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment. As I looked into the eyes of all those 23 who had fallen - all I could see was the future they did not have. How the thread of their tapestries had be knotted.

In the eyes of those men, I saw the grandchildren I may have never met... and an unfiltered and Godly love that I may have never known.

For many seconds, as a stood there staring into eyes only my soul knew, I kept numerating what it takes to be a soldier. To battle, sometimes to the last pull of the thread, for a cause deeper than self.

The 4th of July is upon us and I have displayed my flag; I have looked deep into the threads running through it. The fibers individual yet dense and connected - forming a line of reason and purpose. Each thread by itself not realizing it has a purpose in a grand design...

God Bless Our Country.