Memorial Day Weekend

 It astonishes me how few Americans know the difference between Veterans' Day and Memorial Day --Veteran's Day honors living vets and MD honors those who have died in service of their country. 

We're in Memorial Day weekend now, and it's a good one to avoid the traffic of Miami Beach. Over the years, MD has evolved into Urban Beach Weekend, with thousands of hip hop fans from around the world packing it in. Sadly, it resulted in violence, to the point that many residents high tail it out of town for the weekend -- D2 and Jonathan among them.

The City can't really cancel UBW, and so they try to sort of dilute it. They host the Air and Sea Show, in hopes of bringing in a different demographic -- and sending some of the raucous gatherings over to the mainland. The result is epic traffic -- the cops use license plate scanners to look for criminals who might be entering the Beach -- and it's a good area to avoid.

D2 and Jonathan are in the Bahamas -- celebrating their friend Michael's 32nd. 7 Millennials are there -- Jonathan sent pictures, and the house, in Harbor Island, looks gorgeous.

I began the weekend with an Uber to the Grove last night. Wifey begged off, but I met her friend Diane at the Commodore -- she wanted to pick my brain about what I knew about the law biz job market. I shared what I knew, and Joelle and Kenny joined us. They're off to Spain today, to meet their boys on a cruise out of Barcelona.

After my final martini, I got into another Uber, and spoke Spanish to the driver, who was a proud Nicaraguan. He thought, falsely, I was better at Spanish than I was, and talked the whole way home about politics in Managua. I faked my way through it, and realized that living in Miami, you truly do get to experience the world without leaving the 305.

Today we may meet the grandsons and their parents over at MIA -- the older one LOVES to watch the planes take off and land. His Dad and both grandpas do, too.

My thoughts this holiday season always return to a tale my Dad told about Fate, as he called her, or The Big Man, as I call Him. The tale showed how close a family's history comes to being completely altered.

Mom had gone back to The Bronx to have my sister, due in January of 1945. Dad had been shipped to a base in Texas for battle training before being sent into combat in Europe. One evening, before Dad was shipping out, he was at the post exchange, in a T shirt, and happened to meet a fellow NY Jew also there, also in a T shirt. The two Landsmen hit it off, and though the fact that the other fellow was a bit older and a college grad should have set off a signal to my father, it didn't.

The older fellow asked Dad why he was so down in the dumps. Dad replied that his wife was about to have her first baby, and he might never get to meet him or her (in those days the surprise came at birth). The other fellow said yeah -- that was why the War was so awful, and then the two men put on their shirts.

To my Dad's shock, the other fellow was an officer! My Dad started stumbling with "Sir" and honorifics, and the other fellow shut him down -- they were Hy and whatever the other man's first name was from NYC. My Dad went back to his barracks, to get up early for the airplane trip to Europe.

He lined up, and as he got to the plane, the soldier said "No -- order change came in, per whatever his new friend's name was. You're going back to Pasadena." Dad was relieved and shocked, but not as shocked as he would be several months later.

Back in Pasadena, a Texas comrade ran into him, and said "You're dead!" My Dad said obviously he wasn't -- he was standing right there. The fellow said that Dad's platoon had suffered over 90% casualties -- how was Dad fine? The reason was because of a friendship at the PX.

So thanks to whoever that officer was. He's long gone by now. He was older than Dad, and Dad would be 104 now.

But that one small bureacratic favor led to my entire family -- two sisters, me, 6 grandkids, and now 6 greatgrandkids.

Unfortunately, the family is not close, but everyone is living their lives -- and they have those lives because of an act in Texas in 1944.

So for me, that is Memorial Day.