Last Thursday, Aura and I were upstairs in the home office, packing and preparing for our long-weekend trip to NYC. (Also known as Aura’s First Trip to Manhattan, also known as A NYC Visit Vastly Different from NYC Visits Mommy and Daddy Made Before Becoming a Mommy and a Daddy, also known as Oh How I Miss Restaurants Where You Need Reservations and/or Oh How I Hate Times Square. Anyway, more gory details later.)
As we were waiting for the printer to spew out our hotel confirmation, Aura looked up at my desk and spotted the miniature American flag she had received at last year’s local Fourth of July parade. She nabbed it, then began waving it, marching, and singing a song she must have learned in preschool:
Oh, we love our flag, our country
The red, the white, the blue.
Oh, we love our flag, our country
The red, the white, the blue.
Oh, we love our flag, our country
The red, the white, the blue.
Wave it high and free!
I applauded when she finished. “What a great song to sing as we start the Memorial Day holiday weekend!” I said.
“What do you mean, Mommy?” Aura asked, the little flag fluttering in the breeze from the air conditioning. “What is Memorial Day?”
And so I tried to explain, without explaining too much. How lucky we are to live in a country where we are free to do so many things. How sometimes the very bravest people who live here have to fight other people in other places who don’t want us to be so free, or don’t want other people in other places to be free. How sometimes those brave people fight so hard that they can’t come home again. I stuttered and backtracked and edited and probably muddied the explanation completely.
“But why do some people not want us to be free?” Aura asked, watching me fold clothes into rectangles and tuck them neatly into our suitcase.
I paused, stroking errant wisps of hair back from her forehead. “I don’t know, sweetie,” I answered, although “I don’t know” didn’t seem like much of an answer at all. “But on Memorial Day we stop to really remember all the people who help keep our lives as wonderful as they are.”
Then we packed some more and talked about hotels and lit-up billboards, about pastrami sandwiches and bagels, about Central Park and carousels. And I kept thinking, Wave it high and free, baby. High and free.
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(Thank you to all those in the military who have served, are serving, and will serve. Always, thank you.)
What an incredibly sweet conversation between the two of you. You did a good job of explaining… made me tear up.
I think you did an excellent job of explaining it. Much better than I ever could have done. I hope that you had a wonderful trip to NYC and Aura thought it was as magical as I always did when I was her age.
I’m thinking you said just about all she needed to hear at that time. Good job, Mom!
Aww. I think you did a great job.
I hope you guys had fun! We haven’t been brave enough to take the boys to NYC yet. I have too much fun without them.
That is a beautiful post in honor of Memorial Day. I hate Times Square, too. Painful!
You did a far better job of explaining it than I did! I really enjoyed this post and it was so well written!
You’re a great mom and a great writer. Looking forward to these tales of NYC but don’t scare me away before our big weekend! I am saving up for a pair of fancy non-plastic shoes!
You did a much better job than I could ever do.
What a beautiful way to say thanks and give a hugely deserved head nod to those who serve and who have served.
Great post – we had quite the time explaining it to ours – having skirted around war thus far. I don’t think we explained it quite as well as you, I may steal this for next year…