About A Fragile Folded Flag

What started out as a charming little writing exercise that allowed me to flex my literary muscles while exploring a creative art form that I had spent so much time away from is beginning to morph into an outlet for maintaining sanity and measuring my paces.

I have abandoned the "Writing Challenge" for a "Survival Tactic". You are welcome to read or not read, comment or not comment, thumbs up or bite your thumb. It matters not, really. What I feel compelled to write will find its way to the page. And it will help me, in some small way, feel better. Maybe it will help you feel a little better, too. No promises.

What I will try NOT to do is rant politics or give you a psychiatrist's couch earful. What I will try TO do is to find some bit of promise, a ray of hope, perhaps a chink in the concrete from which a tiny dandelion manages to grow. We will need those in the times ahead.

About A Fragile Folded Flag

Today, at work, we replaced a faded US flag with a bright crisp new one. The last time I did this, we simply took down the old one, never allowing it to hit the ground and bundled it up like a baby to be respectfully decommissioned. This time, the local VFW post got involved and came out in their military casuals to do the honors. These two old-timers donned white gloves while another man read what each fold in the tri-corn folded flag meant.

A small crowd watched from the sidelines, shielding our eyes from the sun in what looked a little like a salute. When the reading and folding were done, the former military man walked up to me and (as I was the director, and basically the ipso facto leader of the place) handed me the folded up flag - a relic of a hard-fought country, a republic that had seen glorious triumphs as well as terrible disgraces in its past. Then he saluted.

The gravity of the folded flag, like those handed to grieving widows at military funerals, now lay in my hands. 

This was the flag that I had pledged to in school with a small hand over the heart, felt patriotic for when it appeared in an unexpected place, and sometimes railed against when I felt that our country had not done its best. Still, this fragile piece of fabric, once vibrant and thick felt so fragile and bony in my hands. I wanted to hug it, to hug away all the divisiveness and discord, to throw it over the shoulders of the hungry and cold, to inspire those who revere it to live by the words of our guiding principles of freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all.

In the end, I gave the small triangular bundle back to the old soldier to decommission it - which I knew meant burning it respectfully.

Just like a mother feels for a child, I may not like what my child is doing at the moment but at no point could I ever stop loving that child. Our stars and stripes, long may she wave!