Poppy Appeal

November is Poppy Appeal Month.

During the month everyone goes around, bundled in their coats, with little paper poppy’s on their collars.  It’s to commemorate all the men and women in the armed forces, including those who are no longer with us.

I think it’s a rather cool idea, poppy month.

As a scholar of the Classics, I remember that poppys in ancient times were funeral flowers for warriors.  The reason being is that often in the places of battlefields, long after the dead were removed, poppys would grow.  For me, poppys are symbols of hope and promise.  A sort of “bad things happened here, but beautiful things can happen too.”

Now, I’m not a war kind of girl.  I don’t like the whole idea, and I wish beyond words that no man or woman of any country would ever have to walk willingly into bullet-laden and bomb scattered fields.  But the fact that people do, and do so willingly gains a lot of respect.  When I pin on my poppy I think about all the people who have come before me, and I hope that in the future there will be less and less need for conflict in the world.  We need a lot less of that.

So, if you happen to be in the UK, please buy a poppy.  If you’re not, hug a solider.  And if you are just a regular old civilian if you could please do your best to make November a month of peace in your life, do so.

It would be nice, in the future, for the poppy to be nothing more than a pretty flower in the field.