The Promise of America

Like many I know, I have mixed feelings anymore about the 4th of July.

That's been true for me since I first visited the Statue of Liberty as a child and watched a short film in the welcome center.  The film featured famous people talking about what the Statue of Liberty meant to them, and it included James Baldwin whose statement is the only one that stayed with me.  He quoted the beginning of the Declaration of Independence and said it was problematic since he hadn't been included in those ideals.  He highlighted that for black people whose families were brought here by force to work as slave labor for others who claimed to believe "all men are created equal" the Statue of Liberty represented only a cruel irony.

It was the first time I truly recognized that symbols of our country flouted as patriotism were painful for many Americans.  It broke my heart that people with as much right to the ideals of America did not feel a part of that dream.  I had a child's love for my country that was uncomplicated.  I had to rethink it.

Our country's history encompasses many dreadful and shameful things.  Too much of that was whitewashed in school when I was young.  There is less of that in my children's education, so they understand better than I did at their ages that there is much about American history that is disturbing and unpleasant.

I asked them this morning on our way to the annual parade how they feel about the 4th of July.  My oldest said she wasn't sure how to feel.  She sees so much happening in our country anymore that is hard to take pride in, that she'd rather think of the holiday as more a celebration of our neighborhood traditions.  My middle child was conflicted because she doesn't want her disgust for the current president to contaminate her ability to enjoy the day.  My youngest doesn't know.  It's hard for him to see the 4th as something other than a candy holiday (and asked why anyone would bother to go to a parade that didn't involve throwing treats into the crowd).

Here's what I told them:  America is a promise.

A Veteran's Day Note (Babble)

I’ve written about my ambivalence for military themed holidays and flag waving before.  I worry about anything that glorifies war while at the same time I think we need to remember and recognize those among us who are willing to make great sacrifices to defend our constitution.  I still feel bewildered sometimes as to how I ended up entangled with any kind of military life.  But I love my husband and he is a soldier so the story is as simple as that.

But this is the story I think of every Veteran’s Day:

(And I apologize now for not knowing off the top of my head who the writer is, but if I find my copy of the original article at any point I will amend this post.)  My dad clips articles for us and mails them out in large packets all the time, and I can tell when he finds one particularly important because it’s a xerox, which means my brothers both received copies of it, too.  Many years ago he sent me a xeroxed article that I saved and still have somewhere buried in a filing cabinet.  It was an essay from the New York Times about Veteran’s Day. 

The author was old enough that his father had fought in World War I.  His father never talked about it, but the author felt great reverence for his service in the Great War, and swelled with pride for his country and his father every Veteran’s Day, back when it was still known as Armistice Day.  He filled in the vacuum of his father’s silence with noble things in his mind.  Until one day, late in his father’s life, the old man finally muttered something about how much he hated Armistice Day.  Because for symbolic purposes leaders on high waited to end the war on the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.  The old soldier said he watched men die in those last few hours of the war.  Lives lost for nothing grander than creating a moment that looked good on paper to people who were too far removed from the suffering to care.  That’s what he thought of on Armistice Day.


My husband is a good man.  There is no one else I’d rather be married to and I’m proud of the way he served in Iraq.  There are many heroic people in uniform who should be acknowledged today, and shown appreciation for what they do for the rest of us.

But we need to try harder to make their jobs unnecessary.  War is a horror.  It may sometimes be necessary, but it should never be welcomed.  I think the reason these wars we are engaged in have gone on so long is that ordinary people are disconnected from them.  My own children forget the wars are still going on because their own dad is finally home and it no longer touches their lives.  I listened to the line repeated so often about, “We must fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here,” and shuddered.  What right do we have to destroy the lives of ordinary people forced to live where we choose to fight a war?

So, yes, please honor those who are deserving today, because their sacrifices are beyond measure.  But don’t mingle that pride with any misplaced affection for the wars themselves.  I’ve met people who do, and they make me feel less safe.  My husband joined the military to help prevent war.  My greatest hope is that he succeeds and works himself right out of a job.

A Memorial Day Note (Babble)

As a resident military family voice here on Babble I felt I should speak up today.  But weirdly I may be the least qualified because I’m not good at this day of remembrance.
I got a lovely call from a relative thanking both my husband for the work he’s doing with the Army in Iraq right now, and me for supporting him and keeping our family together while he does his job.  I appreciated that, because she loves us and cares about us, and her opinion is one I value.  I also appreciated that she attended the local Memorial Day events near her home.  I can’t bring myself to do that, so I’m glad when someone else can. 

When I see parades of uniformed men and women I experience alternating waves of pride and anger and despair and I don’t know what to do with myself.  I try not to let my children see me cry, especially when it’s about feelings so confused that I can’t even explain it to them.  So we avoid military parades.

I have incredibly mixed feelings about the pomp and circumstance associated with all things military.

There is no single category of people who deserve praise across the board merely because they share the same title, whether that title be American soldier, priest, doctor or mom.  I don’t want to lump the service my grandfather did in the Second World War with any of the people who disgraced their uniform by committing atrocities at Abu Ghraib.  I accept the gratitude strangers ask me to pass along to my husband because I know the service he’s doing is honorable and he has earned the praise he gets.  I don’t make blanket assumptions like that about other soldiers, but I give them the benefit of the doubt the same as I do in general for many, regardless of their profession.


The people I admire most are the ones who quietly and consistently work to help others using whatever talents or resources they have.  Some do that as soldiers, others as firefighters, some as scientists or artists or musicians or teachers or nurses or compassionate neighbors.  Many people who deserve to be memorialized are not and never will be.  I’m thankful beyond all measure that there are people like my husband willing to risk their lives so that I may have the freedom to speak and work out my thoughts on such matters without fear of my government.  I appreciate my way of life and understand the sacrifices so many have made so I can enjoy it.  I don’t take that lightly.

But I also believe that we have squandered and abused the willingness to sacrifice of many soldiers and it upsets me deeply.  Just because someone is ready to give his or her life for this country doesn’t mean he or she should do it now or for just any cause.  I am willing to lay down my life for any of my children, but not to throw my body in front of a bus for something like being on time to school.  The cause must be worthy or at least perceived that way.  This particular cause my husband is involved in may be worth his time, but from my point of view it’s not worth his life, so I hope every day it doesn’t come to that.

The medals and ribbons and flag waving and parades are in part sincere tribute, and I’m glad it’s offered.  Part of me is suspicious that it is also there to lead people too young to grasp what their lives could be into joining an organization that seems to offer them glory and respect but that may simply lead to death.  Every time they run an ‘In Memoriam’ segment on the news listing the names and ages of soldiers killed recently, I want to look away and I can’t.  I wouldn’t want people looking away from my husband’s name if it were on such a list.  I end up sitting on the kitchen floor crying, hoping the kids continue playing happily in the yard and don’t stumble across me.  Because those aren’t good teachable moments.  They are moments when I’m too vulnerable to monitor what I say, and my children are too young to be burdened with their mother’s darker thoughts, which are these:

Every day is someone’s Memorial Day.  My grandfather served in the Navy, but I try to honor him every day.  I grieve for him every December 2nd which is when he died.  I’m not going to let someone else dictate when I should remember my grandfather or for what.  And many people grieve for loved ones who died for nothing.  War should not be celebrated and made to look exciting or noble.  War is something the human race should be ashamed that it sometimes must resort to.

As I say, I’m not good at this holiday.  But I think my husband still loves me anyway, and his is the only military opinion I care about.  On this Memorial Day I’m going to go downstairs after I shut my laptop and make my kids blueberry pancakes.  I don’t want them to think about war just because the calendar says we should.  We will play in the yard and maybe go swimming at the Y.  We will read books and make music and live the kind of life people have made great sacrifices to make possible.  I’ll choose my own day to mourn the dead.  That’s not today.

Flagged (Babble)

I don’t own a flag.  Flag waving tends to make me uncomfortable.  I love my country and I believe strongly in our constitution, but symbols of such complicated ideas can be easily abused.  My wedding ring may be a convenient symbol of my marriage, but it isn’t my marriage.  My wedding ring cost six dollars, and I stopped wearing it when it started irritating my finger.  Having a ring is nice but it doesn’t matter.  Symbols should not be more important than the things they represent.

Ian isn’t a fan of flag waving either and prefers to demonstrate his patriotism through his contributions rather than through displaying symbols on our home.   But the military is filled with symbols: ribbons and medals and coins that are earned through time and effort and sacrifice.  I think it’s nice he was awarded a bronze star, but I’m proud of him for his actions whether he’d gotten it or not.

(Aden, 4th of July during the last deployment)

I’m not saying symbols don’t have power.  On the contrary, I think they have too much.  They are often misused and misread.  People want to make assumptions about my husband because they have an idea in their minds of what his uniform symbolizes.  Sometimes they are right, and sometimes not.  The casual manner in which some people use swastikas to add drama to their propaganda turns my stomach, but the fact that we live in a country that tolerates the use of such a notorious symbol as free speech is what I try to focus on and appreciate.  Symbols are too often a substitute for critical thinking and that makes me wary.

The one time in recent memory that I wished I owned a flag was September 11th, 2001.  I was pregnant with Aden.  I could feel her squirming around inside of me as if there were no comfortable spot in which to settle, while I stayed glued to the TV and I cried.  Ian was called to the Army Reserve center for the evening as some kind of emergency measure, and watching him put on his uniform and be driven away with other soldiers was frightening.  It was my first glimpse of what the consequences of that uniform could mean beyond occasional weekends away from me.  I stood on the porch, alone except for the baby in my belly, and watched my neighbor put up his flag.  At that moment I wanted one too.  My country had been attacked, I felt attacked, and there was something comforting and resilient about those stars and stripes.  But the flags of my neighbors were enough.  None of the other houses on my block offered up a soldier.  Some commitment isn’t adequately summed up by flags.

Currently I live in slight fear of flags.  I have recurring nightmares of being handed a folded one in place of my husband.  I used to like to buy pretty picture frames at Target, but they have triangular flag frames in that aisle now and they always spark a sick feeling in my stomach when I spot them.  I don’t know if they always carried those flag frames and I just hadn’t noticed before, or if I just started seeing them because I’m aware of how much I hope to never need one.

I wish I didn’t have such mixed feelings because I like the American flag.  It’s a very attractive flag.  I remember asking my dad when I was a child why we didn’t get one to hang outside like some of the neighbors did, but I don’t remember getting a straight answer.   I’m enough my father’s daughter that as an adult I think I understand.  Children love flags.  They are bright and simple and fun to wave.   But a child’s eye view of the world is less complex.  I think back to visiting the Statue of Liberty the first time and watching the film at the visitors’ center.  It talked about what the statue means to so many through lots of little interview clips.  The repetitious pride was somewhat forgettable, but James Baldwin saying sadly that for black people the Statue of Liberty was a painful reminder of the freedom they were denied stays with me.  It was the first time I’d ever considered another side to all of those patriotic symbols I was surrounded by every day.

Our country reflects us, and since we are flawed, it is flawed.  But the beauty of our country in my mind is that it is structured in a way that addresses those flaws, and changes are possible if we choose to make them.  The fact that when my grandmother was born women couldn’t vote is unfair, but the fact that a few generations later my daughters watched women involved in the last presidential election is the America I believe in.
Several weeks before Ian left he attended a family readiness meeting.  I found a lot of pamphlets and folders from it when I was cleaning out the car at some point, and in the pile of mostly redundant information was a deployment flag–one of those little banners with a red border and a white field with blue stars in it to represent how many soldiers from your household are currently deployed.  I stared at it a long time, not sure what to do with it.  Ian knows me well enough that he understood I would have problems with it, which is why he left it in the trunk.  I don’t like having my husband reduced to a single blue star on a banner.  I don’t like advertising his absence on my house as if I support the idea of war.  But this deployment isn’t only about what I feel.  My whole family is involved and everyone’s feelings count.

I gave the flag to Aden.   I told her it represented her daddy being gone, and that she could do with it whatever seemed right to her.  I figured whether it became a doll blanket or ended up in a drawer, as long as it gave her comfort on some level it was doing its job.  For a week or so it traveled.  She hung it next to her seat in the minivan when we drove to school and brought it inside to put in her bedroom window at night.  That started to get awkward, so I told her if she wanted it up to just pick one spot.  It now hangs in our kitchen window next to her seat at the table.  I still have mixed emotions when I look at that little banner, and displaying it would not have been my choice, but whatever set of clashing ideas it represents to me, to Aden it simply means one thing.  To Aden, it’s all she has right now of daddy.  And she may display that with pride anytime she wants.