Columbia...again and again and again....

I got off duty yesterday so I managed to make the 6th anniversary of the war march in Columbia. I had ordered the new banner for MFSO, and somehow it came out bigger than expected so it ended up in the front of the march. There was a contingent from the Muslim center in town and I was glad to see them. One of the speakers was an Iraqi scholar, who spoke of what Iraq was like before the war and then what had happened. The military affiliated group had shrunk( VFP, IVAW, MFSO) but some of that may have been that there is so much going on today that it was just smaller. There was a much bigger turnout than I expected, actually. I figured that with Obama promising troop reductions that maybe people wouldn't be as interested, but I guess I was wrong.

We got a new video camera for Christmas for our grandparent duties and I took it with me to get a couple of snapshots for the blog for our group. I got a wild hair when I saw the TV camera guy get his stuff out and start filming. I don't know what I was thinking. I just got mad and decided to give them a taste of their own medicine so I started following him around and filming him filming other people. I think I wanted evidence that they look for the flamboyant stuff and don't really film the issues kind of thing. I don't know. Now I have all these minutes on my camera of the video guy. It dawned me after awhile that maybe its not a good idea to stalk Mr.TV so I finally quit.

There were three of us holding up the MFSO banner in the beginning of the march with Thomas Young, the 'body of war' young man behind us, and then many of the Iraqi/Muslim folks followed by the rest of the group in various bunches. About half way through the march, one of the young Iraqi boys ended up walking in front of our banner. He was wrapped in an Iraqi flag. I remember looking over at him and thinking that that little boy in front of our banner, now that's a visual. I'm not sure exactly what it says, but I took the picture in my head home with me and have been turning over in my mind ever since.

I had a friend growing up named Kwan. Her dad was an airman who had married a Vietnamese woman and brought her home to the states. I would go over to Kwan's house sometimes but wouldn't stay long. Her mom didn't speak much English, and it was never very comfortable being there. When I think of the Vietnamese people I think of Kwan's mom. And I think my friendship with Kwan, both of us growing up and going to school together.

This little Iraqi boy is the first Iraqi I will have come into contact with.

I wonder if he will stay with me, like Kwan and Kwan's mom did.

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I spent my week with soldiers, and often in conversations many will share deployment stories about good things they did and sometimes about some really horrible things they saw or experienced.

I am making a concerted effort not to try and make sense of it all anymore, because it makes my head hurt.

I wanted to talk to some of the Iraq/Muslim participants but to be honest I just didn't know what to say.

And I thought about it all the way home and still don't know what I would say.

Really tired tonight.