My Country, My Flag, My Celebration of our Founding.

I call it, I own it, As an American, it belongs to me.

At our house the American flag has always meant something. In the four pictures above, the flag flies in early morning through smoke from our next-door neighbor’s wood fire, giving it a beautiful other-worldly look; it’s about to fly as my Marine husband tenderly raises a fresh new one; it flies as it did every day from the end of our dock; and it is folded properly and handed to me in a ceremony honoring that same Marine as we lay him to rest.

Right now, because I live in an apartment, the best I can do on this day, when I wouldn’t think of celebrating the 250th anniversary of our founding without the Stars and Stripes, is to plant it in among flowers. I like it there. It is my flag. No one can take it from me. No one can steal the symbolism from me. And nobody had better dare.

I feel the same about America. It is my country. I don’t own it. Nobody does. But I’ve lived it and I feel it. I come from immigrant stock. Most of us do. They built a future here and gave me life. I have family and friends who are buried here. My memories are all here.

Everything I do now, while my country is under siege, is geared toward saving it. I wish we were celebrating this very important milestone without the scourge of Donald Trump and all he represents, but he can’t take this day—or the symbolism—away unless we let him.

I won’t let him.

There will be parades and picnics and ball games and fireworks, just as there always are on the Fourth of July, our Independence Day, and with them I hope there will be the remembrance of our founding, of the documents and the men who signed them, imperfect and as unsettled as they might be, of our need to keep what we have built so we may build on it some more, working toward that ‘more perfect union’, for the betterment of us all.

That was the promise of that day, July 4, 1776, when the signers couldn’t know what was ahead. They couldn’t think of everything. The prospect of forming an entire country was too immense, too overwhelming. They had to think in terms of where they were at the moment and what it would mean as they put their plan in action.

We are not perfect. We never could be, but we became a society of rules and laws and mores that kept us from living under a one-rule dictatorship, from ownership by the wealthy, from allowing large-scale corruption by our government and by our courts. Until now.

So let today extend that 1776 promise. Let this be the day we gather the strength and the courage of those founders as they faced certain death if it all went wrong, as they promised to carry the burden and give up all they had, to rule without favor or ego, to build a society that might be worth whatever it took to get us there.

We know we’ve failed is so many ways. We didn’t get it right. But we’ve been better than we are now, and part of our remembrance today must include that part that got it right.

I see today as a new beginning. If that seems like annoying optimism, I’m okay with that. I’ll fly my flag proudly. I’ll celebrate my country. I’ll look forward to tomorrow or the next day, when we get back to the fight. We have a history of seeking justice and a better life. What’s happening now is not a part of it. This is an ugly anomaly, a time of terror brought on by people unworthy of calling themselves Americans.

We must end this. And today, the 250th anniversary of the birth of our country, might be a good time to figure out what makes us Americans. Are we who Trump and his henchmen say we are? Or are we the ones who will save us from them?

I know who I am and I’m ready for the fight. My country and my flag don’t haunt me. They might if I felt they had really been stolen. They haven’t been. They are being used in ways that sicken me but they’ll come back from this. And I’m here to help. That’s my promise on this Day of Independence.

---

More reading:

Constant Commoner revolves around my thoughts as a woman who has aged and grown and learned by a process that feels miraculous considering I have no formal education or unique abilities. We the people are all commoners. We believe based on our own past and our own feelings. We choose a path we can live with and if we’re lucky we get to share our lives with people who care, who understand.

That’s what I aim to do here. I want to build a community where anyone can come and sit on our porch and grow along with the rest of us.

***You can join the paying ranks (Thank you, paying ranks!) through Substack below, or you can support my work by tipping any amount at any time at Ko-Fi or at Paypal. Much appreciated.