I Could Cry Salty Tears.

voltee ♦ December 8, 2010 ♦ 8 Comments

Item:  Skirt   Color/Fabric:  Turquoise and Royal blue, cotton   Designer:  Odille  Where Purchased:  Salvation Army   Years Owned:  1.5

It has been a somber sort of day.  I’m not sure if it is the fact that I didn’t sleep well last night, or if I’m still recovering from my mysterious illness on Sunday, or if I’m just depressed because I still have not managed to complete my Christmas decorations.

It also, most likely, has something to do with the fact that I have been thinking about Pearl Harbor all the day long.  It started this afternoon, when I saw a picture on the internet; until then I had forgotten what the date was.

And I started to think about last year, when we visited the Pearl Harbor memorial in Hawaii.

I didn’t know that it would be so enormously powerful.  In the beginning I really thought that I would not feel much.  We had skipped breakfast in order to get there early, as we had a packed day ahead of us.  Was it even our last day?  I can’t remember, but it’s very possible.  We got our tickets, then had to wait for a while to watch a film, then take a boat to the USS Arizona memorial.

We bought snacks from a stand, and stood around laughing and enjoying some of the last Hawaii sunbeams that would touch our skin.  There were missiles, and huge battle guns that you could sit on and play with.  And the ocean, all around, shining like a sapphire.

It just did not seem conceivable that such unimaginable tragedy could ever have touched that paradise.  It didn’t seem real to me, at all.

When we went in to watch the film, the volunteer that led us recounted his personal tale, having witnessed the attack as a little boy.  That was the first time that it started to feel real to me, but I think at that point I still felt more sad about the prospect of going home.

Then, the boat ride out to the memorial.  Passing along the way all of the boats that had sunk in the Harbor.  I had never realized that part of the boats would still be visible.  And it felt real, beyond a doubt, at that point.  It was like a fist beginning to close around my heart.  Then, this:

The memorial was so beautiful, and elegant.  The contrast between the perfect whiteness of the memorial and the rusted metal of the ship it was immortizilizing simply took my breath away.  Again, I had no idea that the memorial was built directly above the ship, and that the ship was still visible.  Or that oil was still rising up from the wreckage.  Still!  You could stand and watch it bubble to the surface.  Like it had happened only yesterday.

One of the most striking images I remember is the fish swimming around in the wreck of the ship.  The same brilliantly colored fish we pursued snorkeling in the open ocean made their home among that rusted metal.  It was a stirring reminder of the resilience of the world.

I could not help but weep for the men who had died right beneath my feet.  But the moment when my heart broke entirely, and still may never recover, was when I was reading the names of the men entombed in the ship.  At the end of the list, there were a few additional names.  Men who had survived the attack but asked to have been buried at the ship with their lost comrades.  That I just could not handle.  The thought of those men, surviving such a horror, and then healing, living their entire lives, perhaps having a family.  With that day always, always a part of them, so much so that they wanted to return there upon their death.

Ah.  It’s just too much for me to comprehend…

Now it seems silly that I would choose to wear such an irreverent sort of skirt to such a place.  I had bought this with Lisa at Uncle Sal’s on a half priced Wednesday, the week before our trip.  It is not my size.  Not even close.  But it just seemed so tropical, and I loved the fullness and the weight of it that I tried it anyway.  It has a drawstring, so I could just cinch it up, and it worked.  It is the fullest skirt I’ve ever owned, perhaps to the point of absurdity, so much so that I didn’t even attempt to put it on Trixie.  It would swallow her up.  I am very partial to it.  I do sort of wonder, though, how it might look if it was the correct size.  I have contemplated letting this go for that reason, but I just have not been able to bring myself to.

**This has made it on stage for a few shows now, and it looks great. I will probably wear it again, too, someday, so it stays.