What a Veteran Looked Like to Me

My Grandfather Wilson was a veteran. 

He never did talk about war to me. 

He was a fisherman and a hugger. The man who taught me to swim off the pier in Lake Chicot. 

He was the one who would venture out into the yard to get me out of the pear tree when I had run out there for fresh pears bare foot and did not want to brave the painful cock-a-burrs on the way back to the house. 

My grandfather wore overalls and welder's hats and smelled sweet and sticky like stale beer and sweat. He made swings on clothes lines and caught fire flies in jars with us. When he died in the eighties, part of my world died too. 

He was barely a man when he braved war, but for his sacrifice and the men and woman who sacrificed before and after him, I want to say thank you. 

Thank you for believing in America. Thank you for risking it all. Thank  you for giving when you did not have to. Thank you for making me safer. Thank you for standing up and changing the world. You made a difference. You are a veteran. You are a hero. 

Do you have a veteran in your life? What is your favorite thing about them?