Flag Bearer
I remember carrying the flag for you, Grandma. You were so much stronger than me, taller than me. But you let me carry the flag. I’m sure that to you the flag was a symbol of freedom and honor that I could not have understood at five years old. Looking back, I don’t remember it being so early, but it must have been 7:00am at the latest. It was always the first thing in the morning, even before breakfast. I wish I could remember every detail, the way the clouds were all just whisked away, the blue sky so vibrant that I’ve only seen it’s equal in my dreams since. The dock bobbed up and down on the lake as the sun slowly came into the sky.
“Don’t let it touch the ground” you’d remind me firmly.
“Oh I won’t!”
My emphatic response must have brought that smile to your face. You must have known I wouldn’t drop it. Bursting with pride at being entrusted with such a task, I was sure that nothing would stop me from a perfect performance. I’d march beside you down the little gravel road between the handful of trailers in the wooded field, towards the pavilion with it’s empty flag pole.
Upon reaching our destination, you would unwind the cord from the pole and carefully attach the flag, loop by loop. I’d watch, mesmerized as the flag slowly unwound from it’s triangular resting place in my arms and unfurled it’s stars and stripes to dance in the wind. In wonder I’d watch you hoist it up to it’s zenith. There, at the height of its glory, I would be able to see it all day. Whether dangling my feet off the dock into the cool lake water, or chasing frogs and rummaging for snails by the cattails, I could look up and see our day’s first labor soaring in the wind.
* * * *
When I was very lucky, I would get to help you take the flag down and retire it for the evening. We’d carefully fold it back up into a triangle, you’d set it carefully on my outstretched arms.
“Now don’t drop it.”
“Oh, I wont!”
And then you’d smile
* * * *
Still today, when I see a flag dancing in the breeze, I sometimes think of those trailers in that wooded field by the lake. I remember walking in my little flip flops along the gravel strip leading to the pavilion and the flag pole. I’m sure the dock is gone now, the lake overgrown with moss. The pavilion has long since been torn down. I remember seeing the old pavilion years later. The left side had been destroyed by fire. Someone had come out to drink and party, likely from the nearby town. They broke into the gate and decided they wanted a fire in the pavilion. They cut the dock loose to throw more wood on the fire, but it floated away. They ruined a place of my childhood joys, so that I cannot go back and revisit them in person.
Nor could we return there, for you are gone too, Grandma. Like the pavilion and the trees, you are no more.
But in my mind I can still see the mossy lake where I caught my first catfish. I can remember the dock bobbing up and down, while I dangled my feet in the cool water. And I can still see our flag pole by the pavilion, with our flag soaring up high in the wind. Our flag pole is gone now, Grandma. We can no longer march down that gravel strip, nor can we return to those summer days, kissed with green grass and the cool lake.
Whatever that land has become, once upon a time it was a sanctuary for a little boy chasing frogs and snails, fishing off the dock with his toes in the water. He’d look up and see the first work of the day soaring above. But he probably didn’t see you watching him. Yet I know you must have been watching that little boy on the dock, even as he watched that flag soaring in the wind.
Now, years later, I wonder if you’re still watching. I wonder if that better place has a lake or a flag pole. I wonder if you are waiting for your flag bearer, and if some day we will again march down a gravel strip and raise the flag to dance in the breeze.
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