It's a grand old flag

Tomorrow, we hold our usual huge Fourth of July cookout and fireworks party. We're currently at 98 definite attendees and 8 maybes, so even though some folks will almost certainly end up not coming we should have a good crowd. I'm looking forward to it, even though I'll spend much of the day working on setup, grilling, managing and participating in the fireworks show, and so on.

I'll almost certainly also think more than a little bit about the day itself, what others have paid to let me live in what I still believe to be the best country on Earth, and how lucky I am to be here. I don't agree with much our government is doing, and I haven't admired many of our leaders in a very long time, but at heart I'm patriotic. I simply don't believe being patriotic means you have to be uncritical.

I was in the Young Marines for three years that began not long after I turned ten. I can and have told many stories about that time, and I'll almost certainly keep dealing with the experience until I die. It did me a lot of damage, more than most people can understand. Though I've never been in the military, those three years gave me a glimpse of that life. They also gave me a built-in respect for the flag. Flag burning? Not me. Laws against it? Not me, either; in America, my America, people are and should be free to express themselves as they want. If I don't like it, I don't have to watch.

When I see a flag flying, when I really see it, not just pass by it, I think many things. I think of my stepfather and what WWII cost him. I think of his two sons, particularly Ed Jr., who has no hair from his time in the service. I think of my friend Dave, who's enriched the lives of many as he's tried to cope in his writing with his own. I think of so many who have paid so much.

And I always think of a ten-year-old boy, standing at attention in his perfectly starched and ironed fatigues, his gig line straight, his cover perfect, his boots gleaming in the hot Florida sun, his posture unwavering as sweat runs down his back, his salute rock solid in flawless form as his platoon raises the flag, and though in my adult mind I know that as that kid the experience messed me up royally, what I feel in my heart, what quickens my pulse, is the knowledge that it was my flag, my platoon, my Young Marines, even--though I wasn't really entitled to say so--my Marines. Semper Fi.