Feels strange to be in Guatemala in July and August without Olivia and Mateo, but they’re young adults now, busy working and living their lives. Even without them, I still want to go! Lucky for me, I’m surrounded by other Guatmamas and Guatmamas-adjacents as we travel through towns around Lake Atitlan with its breathtaking backdrop of volcanoes.

My husband Tim and I sponsor 3 nursing students in Chichicastenango through Guatemala Service Projects; I’m grateful to my friend Patti for visiting with them in Chichi and sending our best wishes when I wasn’t able to make the trip.

Never could I have imagined how profoundly adopting our kids from Guatemala would change my life. Guatemala is their homeland and also my heart.

There aren’t a lot of specific classroom sessions I remember from my school days, but one I’ve never forgotten is the experience of reading for the first time the poem “Grass” by Carl Sandburg. I can’t say what grade I was in, or even what school.

At the time, I didn’t consciously understand the impact of using strong verbs, repetition and short declarative sentences. I only felt the effect of the poem—a stirring of emotion for events and places far away from where I was sitting.

In case you’re not familiar with it, here it is:

Grass by Carl Sandburg

“Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Shovel them under and let me work—

I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

What place is this?

Where are we now?

I am the grass.

Let me work.”

–Carl Sandburg

So when my husband Tim and I decided to go to Belgium, visiting Ypres was top of our list. Like many people my age, I had a grandfather who served in World War I. Roger Dwyer (as he was then known) was an Irish citizen who fought for Great Britain and migrated to New York after the war.

Tim and I signed up for a ten-hour bus tour from Bruges to Ypres, called “Ieper” in Flemish. We first visited the German burial ground, with flat gray headstones and a sculptural installation called “The Grieving Parents” by German artist Käthe Kollwitz. The dual sculptures show a mother with bowed head and bent posture and a stoic father with crossed arms. The pair are positioned to over look the actual grave of Käthe Kollwitz’ younger son, Peter, who was killed on the Ypres battlefield in 1914. Years later, Kollwitz’s grandson, also named Peter, would be killed in action during World War II; and Kollwitz’s art would be banned by the Nazis as “degenerate.”

We then visited the Essex Farm Cemetery, known as “Flanders Fields” after the poem by Canadian physician and poet John McCrae, who volunteered for duty as a field surgeon at age 41. McCrae wrote the poem “In Flanders Fields” in May 1915, after the burial of a close friend and comrade during the Second Battle of Ypres. McCrae himself died of pneumonia near the end of the war.

Ypres today has more than 100 soldier burial grounds. We saw hundreds of headstones marked “A Soldier of the Great War/Known unto God” and one, of Arthur Conway Young of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, inscribed: “Sacrificed to the Fallacy that War Can End War.” As we wandered among the thousands of grave markers, I couldn’t help but wonder if my grandfather had served alongside any of the dead or walked Ypres sacred grounds. I wish I’d asked more questions when he was alive.

We ended the day by attending the “Last Post,” a ceremony conducted in Ypres every night in all weather since May 1, 1929, except for the four years Germany occupied the city during World War II. The “last post” is a traditional bugle call played at military funerals and times of remembrance. The horn’s somber strains indicate a soldier’s duty is done, and he may rest in peace. The ceremony included the laying of red wreaths made from poppies, to honor and commemorate.

Of the many sites we’ve visited in Europe, Ypres and its battlefields was one of the most moving. I urge you to go if you have the chance.

I’m behind in everything as usual, and sometimes this blog, which I love and to which I’m loyal–and have been for 13+ years (!!!)–falls low on my priority list. I actually post more on Facebook, if you want to find me there, if only because I take photos on my phone and can post directly.

I’m sure a smarter and more tech-savvy person than I would be able to post blogs and photos from my phone as well. But I’m not that person, nor will I be any time soon. So here’s an entry from an event that happened more than a month ago, which I wrote in Amsterdam after viewing the once-in-a-lifetime Vermeer exhibition. In his short life, Vermeer painted only 37 paintings, and the exhibition at the Rijks assembled most of them.

I wrote this reflection at night in my hotel room, the day after seeing the Vermeer, when I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

What I miss most about working in museums—besides seeing my friends—is the privilege of thinking, writing and being around art, literally all day every day. That’s how I’m feeling about the Vermeer show, which we saw last night, staying until they threw us out: I wish I could be there now, be there again, to move through those galleries absorbing that beauty and light and stillness.

Everything they say about Vermeer’s paintings is true. My photos don’t come close.