Before I started working on Healing Wars, a dance/theater piece set in a time warp between the American Civil War and our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I used this reminder day to think about my father. He was in the 10th Mountain Division and fought in Italy during World War II. Like so many, he came home and tried to find work (his brief flirtation with communism made that even more difficult than usual for returning vets). We moved to Washington DC and then Milwaukee where he went into the family tire business and then turned to politics.

I have been reconsidering my father and his stories and myths as I set about researching the life of returning vets from these other conflicts that fill the stage of Healing Wars. In addition to reading many accounts from diaries, books and online resources, the performers and I have sat in many circles with returning soldiers and have heard their stories. It made me see that my father’s reticence in talking about his war years was a failure on all our parts. He was gregarious about so much in his life; why the quiet about those years?

What I did glean from him, was the special place in his heart he held his war companions and the way in which he missed them. I always thought of it as a kind of love that was particular to these men. Now listening, as we have over the past few years, I have come to see this yearning with a bit more clarity. It is not just love that they miss. They also miss the purposefulness of their every waking minute, even when they were waiting. And they miss the risk.

I began to ponder this more deeply as I looked at my own life. I too am addicted to these three things: risk, purpose, and love. And I see that those ingredients fill my life as an artist whether I throwing myself into a project without knowing its ending, or building the environment for the ensemble to do its best work, or listening to countless stories from individuals who have so much to tell. I hold an absolute belief that art can make a difference especially as it emerges from inquiry, compassion, truth telling in all its ambiguity, and a certain willingness to collaborate with anyone who enters the space including the audience.

My father sought these three things too. He found his purpose in fighting for others as the secretary of Labor for the state of Wisconsin, as he fought for civil rights until the day he died. I think he found his risk by refusing to become bitter and by attempting to sustain his belief in democracy despite all its flaws. Risk. Purpose. Love. The ingredients for remembering Veterans Day.