The questions just keep gettin' harder to answer
I'm not American, although I've lived here for 14 years now, am married to an American, and have given birth to an American. But I still claim the fact that I'm not American as an excuse for my ignorance of things like... Flag Day. Which was today. Sure enough as I sit here typing and glance over at my calendar, there it is in small font next to the big "14". Flag Day.
I decided this morning upon waking that we were going to play Soccer Hookie today. I just wanted us to do something a bit different. So after breakfast and our compulsory trip to the coffee shop for bagels and hot chocolate, Bobbin and I headed out to Kirkland to a little playground by the lake. The attraction was the lake, not the playground. The playground was actually quite pitiful compared to the rest of the east side's privately funded money play pits. But it was right on the "beach" (I use the term loosely, as I've been to real beaches - the kind on the ocean or for lacking of an ocean, the kind you find along the great lakes). To its credit, it is a pretty sandy beach, and clean if you ignore the cottonwood tree debris that is blanketing everything in the greater Puget Sound region these days. Nice, quiet, with tame little waves that lap up onto the sand just enough to tickle your toes. Bobbin enjoyed herself immensely, writing in the wet sand with a stick and watching the waves come up and "erase" her artwork within seconds. She thought that was magic.
After playing there for about an hour we decided to head back to the local outdoor mall for lunch - hotdogs, of course. What else?
Lunch was a bit of a test; she had soaked her shoes and socks at the beach and they hadn't dried yet by the time we got there but Bobbin was so hungry she didn't want to go home first. So I carried her into the restaurant and she sat barefoot at the table happily gorging herself on turkey hot dog and a bowl full of melon chunks. Both were gone in the space of 10 minutes.
After lunch Bobbin decided that she wanted a cookie for dessert. She knows the "Cow Chips" is upstairs (not my fault!) so I carried her up the steps and we ordered a "Cookiedoodle" to go. This is Bobbin's version of a Snickerdoodle (also something I claim ignorance of for lack of American heritage. Who the hell outside of the US has ever heard of a snickerdoodle? Sarah, am I wrong?). And while we were up there, we noticed a firetruck parked in the middle of the street immediately below the circular skybridge we were on (it's an outdoor mall. California, I get it. But the Pacific Northwest? You gotta admit the idea of an outdoor mall in this area is a bit misplaced). Bobbin ignored her bare feet and insisted we go check it out. And as we were standing right in front of it, having fun waving at the firefighters who were amiably waving back, the ladder started to move.
Up up up, right in front of us, the end passing literally a couple of feet in front of our faces as it ascended. Hanging from the last rung was an American flag. It was Flag Day. I glanced behind us on the other side of the bridge and saw a number of VFWs standing tall, waiting until the flag reached its apex so that the Flag Day ceremony at the mall could commence.
Bobbin and I headed downstairs to witness the ceremony. After an exhuberant "BYE BYE FIRETRUCKS! BYE BYE FIREFIGHTERS!" from Bobbin that the entire mall could hear, we made our way down the steps and over to the section of folding chairs that had been laid out in the center of the street.
There were bag pipes, and trumpets, and speeches, and saluting, and flag raising and flag folding, and of course, the American national anthem, or as Bobbin likes to call it, The American Song. She requests it during bath time all the time and I always oblige because I like the way my singing sounds in the bathroom :-) So she knows a lot of the words already and is quite the patriotic little lady.
I don't know what it is about soldiers in uniform saluting the flag but it always chokes me up and brings tears to my eyes. And then the flag waving in the light breeze as the anthem played. And then the colour guard marching forward as the piper played. I was a snotty mess by the end of it, and when the commanding officer gave his speech about flag day and made mention of the men and women serving in uniform to defend our freedom and ask us never to forget what they've done for us, and are doing for us, and their bravery and loyal service, that was pretty much it. The tears were rolling. They always do. The emotion just swells.
Before you go giving me too much credit, I have to admit that the same emotions swell during any military or national ceremony regardless of what is being celebrated or paid tribute. Fourth of July. Canada Day. Victoria Day. Rememberance Day. Veterans' Day. Memorial Day. The moment of silence during the 7th inning stretch at the opening day of baseball. The Canadian National Anthem in the Stanley Cup playoffs. I even choked up in Milan when I listened to the German anthem play over the loudspeakers as Michael Schumaker took the podium to accept first place for the Formula One race he had just finished.
So I was awash in tears, and Bobbin, who had been paying me absolutely no mind at all for most of the morning leading up to this moment, suddenly turned to me and with grave concern and great volume, shouted out "Mommy? Are you crying? Mommy? Why are you crying? Did you fall down? Mommy, why are you crying?!"
I promised to explain it to her later in the car if she sat down quietly to listen to the rest of the speech. It didn't really work though. The next 10 minutes were filled with loud whispers and occasional vocal outbursts of "But Mommy, why are you crying? Are you ok? What made you cry Mommy".
We eventually got through the rest of the ceremony, which filled me with just as much emotion as the first part. I even learned something. Like the fact that the 13 folds of the flag don't actually symbolize the 13 colonies of the original United States as apparently most Americans believe. I didn't believe that; I actually didn't know what the 13 folds symbolized but had enough intelligence to realize they symbolized something. But for those of you who were under this false impression, the truth is that each fold represents the "religious beliefs upon which our country was originally founded"; I quote the officer who spoke these words. If you are interested, here is the meaning of the 13 Folds of the American Flag, and this is what they recited at the ceremony as they folded it in front of us. Needless to say, a fresh flow of the tears were streaking my cheeks by the time he had finished. Although again before you giving me too much credit (or taking too much away) for the perceived devotion to christianity that my tears represented, I have to also admit that behind the emotions triggered by the uniformed solemness of the ceremony that were dominating my foremost thoughts, in the back of my mind I was having a more logic-minded discussion with myself about how exclusionary this now seemed to be, given the diversity of religious beliefs that exists in the country today. And then I rethought that and realized that said diversity actually probably doesn't exist in large portions of the country given that this is also the country that elected the likes of George Bush twice. And then I reflected on the "separation of church and state" hypocrisy that is this country. And then the moment had passed.
So anyway, the ceremony ended and they put the folding chairs away. I went up to the commanding officer and thanked him and he was very gracious to me in return, and he chatted with Bobbin who hid shyly behind my legs the whole time. And then we went and checked out the firetruck and said "Hi" to the firefighters and watched as they packed up their things and got ready to go. We waved our loud "BYE BYE" to the truck as it drove off, and we headed back to the car.
And once in the car, the questions resurfaced immediately. Bobbin holds you to a promise, and she NEVER forgets.
"Mommy, why back there you were crying? What made you cry? You were sad? Why were you sad?"
And I answered as best as I could, explaining that I was sad because the man in the uniform was remembering all of the soldiers who have gone to fight in wars and defended our freedom, and so many of them died and so many more of them were hurt, and their families were hurt, and it was a very sad thing that so many people had to die even if it was for a just cause.
And that led to the next line of questioning which was
"Mommy, what is a war?"
and
"Mommy, why people have to fight in a war?"
and
"Mommy, why so many people have to died in a war?"
and
"Mommy, why you can get hurt in the war? Why people hurt you?"
and
"Mommy, hurting people is not ok. Why people are fighting? Fighting is not ok"
and finally
"Mommy, I want to go see a war. Can we go there? I want to go there" ("There" was a reference to Iraq and Afghanastan, which I told her is where there are soldiers fighting wars now).
I'm going to spare you my answers. I did the best I could. I was honest, but I didn't go into the gory details. But I also wanted to try and paint the right picture, which involves a lot of grey and no black and white when it comes to war being "good" or "bad" and the people fighting them being "good" or "bad". Wars can be fought for the right principles, and good people can get hurt, and the people fighting on the other side themselves aren't "bad" they are just doing the same for their country, and on and on. There really is no explanation that an almost 3-year-old can comprehend. I don't fully comprehend on many levels myself. I don't think you can unless you've fought one. But I did my best.
And was infinitely relieved when her 3-year-old attention span kicked in and the conversation was immediately switched to "Why is that man on the sidewalk holding a bicycle tire in his hand. Mommy? Did you see that? He didn't have a bicycle. Why he had a tire? What he is going to do wif it? Mommy, are you listening to me?"
I think I'd rather have an indepth teenage "birds and bees" conversation with her before another conversation explaining war.
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