Old Glory

My father used to hang our flag out on those particular days of the year set aside to honor patriotism or American troops—Veterans Day, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July. Early in the morning he would go to the hall closet, push aside the winter coats, extract the flag from where it had been languishing in a dark corner, and carry it to the front porch. My sister and I would follow him out and watch as he carefully removed the sheath that kept our flag protected from dust and debris, then, holding it high so that it never touched the ground, he would carefully slip the wooden dowel into the permanent metal holder he had bolted to the porch post, slowly rotating it so that the flag unfurled. It was such a precise and deliberate routine, I almost felt like saluting or placing my hand over my heart.

By the time I was a teenager, my father had been dead for years. No one put our flag out anymore. My generation was the one that burned the flag, or tore it in strips to make hair ties or bandanas, or sewed it upside down on the backs of military fatigue jackets. Our irreverence was monumental because our rage had reached monumental proportions. We were angry at the politicians we hadn’t elected and didn’t support, the ones who were sending teenaged boys off to fight a war in a country that was so far away we’d never even heard of it. We were even more angry when we discovered that those same politicians had been lying about what was really going on.

Many times, in those years, I thought of my father’s tender unfurling of the flag and his fierce patriotism. Had he lived to see the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, the similar death of Kennedy’s brother Robert five years later, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. that same year, the rioting and chaos in this country and the mass slaughter on both sides in the Vietnam War, it would have broken his heart. Through it all, I have no doubt that he would have continued to bring out the flag on those special days, to hold it high and honor it.

Last night I fell asleep listening to the rain and thinking of my father. This morning at 6:30, when I was certain the storm had passed, and the sun began to rise on a gorgeous day, I went to my hall closet and retrieved my flag, carrying it to the front porch and slipping it into the stanchion on the post there. As I write this, I can see it through the glass panes of the kitchen door. A light breeze wafts through, and the stars and stripes flutter. Sixty years past, still angry at the state of the union, but never having lost my own sense of patriotism, I am proud to repeat my father’s routine. Sixty years on, when I am dead and gone, may Old Glory proudly wave still.