If you don’t come from a military family, you may wonder about the banners that you sometimes see displayed in home windows. (A picture of ours follows.) In honor of Memorial Day, I wrote a couple of haikus to explain the difference between the blue star (like ours) and the one no one ever wants to have: the gold star.

Red frame, one blue star:
A banner for loved ones far,
Far away … deployed

Red frame, one gold star:
A banner for loved ones lost –
Memorial Day