The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month
Dude, Tempus fuget!
Mom’s memory of Armistice Day was direct. She was six, and she remembered the operator calling everyone on the party line with the great news that World War I had ended. The message came along a wire her father had strung himself when no neighbor saw the point of a telephone. The Great War had been real to her: She always felt that the reason she couldn’t bear to hear Schubert’s Ave Maria was that it had been playing on the Victrola when word came that Aunt Helena’s beau had died in France.
For me, “Armistice Day” is about my mother – there’s one degree of separation. Always loving an opportunity to teach a bit of history, she never let a year go by without reminding me that the armistice that ended The War to End All Wars went into effect at the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month,” Anno Domino 1918. I suspect most grade-school kids would assume I was around for that event, probably watching it on TV, but for me, “Armistice Day” is a memory of Mom, not the event.
Yesterday, I asked a sixth-grader if he knew what Veteran’s Day was about. He thought for a moment that it meant we should “support our troops,” then remembered it was to honor veterans. I asked him if he knew why Veteran’s Day was on November 11. Nope. Had he ever heard of “Armistice Day"? Nope. “I never even heard of ‘armistice’ before.” So I told him about Mom.
Requiscant in pace.