A friend recommended a book, Good Night, Irene, a Novel by Luis Alberto Urrea.  I knew what it was about but didn’t expect how personal it would become.  My father flew a B-17 out of the base in England where the first part takes place.  The author describes the drama and tension of the planes taking off and the wait to see who returned.  

I sit here now caught in memories and sadness at the loss of my father who passed away in an accident in 1969.  I feel memories of his experience, of how families share a history.

His crew completed the required missions, and then flew out of Italy.  The B-17 he was piloting was shot down, and the crew parachuted out along a route that landed them in Austria.  My husband and I went to the village where he landed, and met people who saw him land, who fed him, and turned him over to the SS as the village was small and undefended with only women and children left.  

Seeing me they knew he lived.  They wanted me to know they had no choice, and I understood.  They talked of how tall and handsome he was which was true.  He was half-German and half-Norwegian, and so again how strange this tragedy of war where depending where one lives determines what side one is on.  

Oddly the village was so small, it had no jail or cell so he was held in a small room in which I then stood.  The room is in an art center now.  The exhibit in the building when I was there was of California landscapes so I felt myself caught in a melange of time travel. I was in the present, the past, and though in Austria seeing a landscape of where I live.  I was disoriented and felt sick.

I sit here now absorbing it all.   I know that life is impermanent, is always moving, and we honor the flow, and yet, there are places in us that, like stones, create the river’s song.