
The view from my window
OUR APARTMENT – MY WINDOW – FACES THE FLAG
I spend ALL day EVERY day I’m home with a giant American flag in my sights.
Today I was honored to lean on my windowsill to recite the Pledge of Allegiance for the Veteran’s Day ceremony at our retirement complex.
I literally had the best seat in the house, as the flag was raised.
I grew up in Mexico
and this was not a regular occasion for me. It was thrilling, every year, to attend the Fourth of July celebration at the American School (we didn’t attend it), as a Girl Guide of Mexico (North District – the English speaking Guides), and to parade in our uniforms with all the other expats in organizations such as The Knights of Columbus and the Boy Scouts.
But, even though I probably did this when I was still in California (up to first grade, IIRC), I don’t remember doing so. I DO remember doing air raid drills against the inner walls of my classroom, each row pushing our desks to the wall, and climbing under (these were Cold War years, and it might have been useless against a real atomic bomb, but it was something to do.
I wonder what the surviving grownups would have done with classes full of small children, but that’s neither here nor there.
This is our first year in the new community in our permanent apartment
Our forever home. We moved here in February. And will stay until we need higher levels of care, and even that will be in this same building.
And I have had the privilege of remembering, and of saying out loud that I believe this is for ALL Americans. Every single one of them.
NOT just the privileged few who have more money than they could ever use, and seem determined to acquire more every day.
I am a baby boomer
My parents were married during WWII, and carefully postponed having their five daughters until after Daddy was demobilized and finished his engineering degree on the GI Bill.
I have been proud to be an American, all the time I lived in Mexico, and since I returned. I thought we stood for something worth having.
Even with the present difficulties, I hope the Founding Fathers built in enough resilience that we can get back on track.
I need to go read more about how the Nation survived Andrew Jackson, and Nixon, and look for the signs of hope.
I intend to be in Independent Living here, with many people in their late nineties, for at least another thirty years.
This was a good start.
I seem stubbornly optimistic, always returning to what should be done. For all.
Happy Veterans Day!