Elise Martin An Abundance of Flags

An Abundance of Flags

elise martin

Covid left few of us unchanged—in my case that included a new puppy to keep my husband and me company during quarantine. Actions have consequences, and one of the consequences of bringing a new puppy into our lives was a new routine of daily, increasingly longer walks to harness that puppy’s energy. Those walks went from neighborhood blocks to beyond the neighborhood and eventually beyond our city to new places where a rambunctious pup might burn off some of her energy. That winter, the pup even accompanied us on a road trip to Florida to escape what we knew would be long winter months of isolation, pre-vaccine. Still, whether home in Lowell or on the road—in the next town or 1200 miles away—we walked, multiple times a day, down streets and in neighborhoods that soon became familiar to us.

Walking with a puppy was a completely different experience for me. I had been used to walking or running for exercise, often with earbuds in, listening to music or podcasts that took me to a different time and space. Walking a puppy puts you smack dab in the moment, with a lot of meandering and stops for puppy sniffs. It also leaves you with lots of time to look around, take in details that you might have missed otherwise. One of the things I started to notice and pay attention to were American flags on display—in yards, on buildings, in windows, on cars and trucks and boats. There is nothing unusual about American flags on display in our country—we have had a flagpole in our yard or at our front door for decades, as have so many other Americans regardless of where they live. But in my pandemic era travels, and on my endless walks, I started to sense that there was now nuance involved in the display of some of these flags. Sometimes the nuance was overt— the American flag paired with another flag or banner or sign that made clear the owner’s stand on political and/or cultural issues. And sometimes the nuance was more subtle—for example, the size or the number of the flags displayed on a property or vehicle. I paid more attention, and in doing so found myself reflecting on my own sense of the American flag throughout my life.

As a child in public school in the 1960s, I learned the Pledge of Allegiance by heart pretty quickly, as did my peers, from the sheer force of daily repetition. I don’t think we recognized the individual words, let alone meaning of this until years after we had it memorized. We’ve all now seen funny YouTube videos of young children (and adults) almost mindlessly verbalizing a word salad that sounds right but has little meaning at the age of five or six or seven (or in some cases, seventy!). I remember once giggling about something totally unrelated to the flag while I “pledged allegiance” as an elementary school student and feeling shame at being chastised by my teacher. The Pledge of Allegiance to our flag was a sacred ritual in public schools, not to be taken lightly.

I also remember being an impressionable teenager during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, as the country started to simmer and then burn. I remember seeing American flags wrapped around protesters on television news broadcasts, and burned in protest of issues of the day, including the Vietnam War, the Draft, Black Americans’ civil rights, and women’s reproductive rights. In my memory, those protests were against our government and its representatives as well as those Americans who upheld the government’s stance on those issues—“the Establishment.”

Still, I believed, and continue to believe, that the flag represents our vast country and its ideals. The degree to which some individuals and groups felt strongly that our country’s policies did not reflect our forefathers’ ideals was reflected in their use of the flag to express their rejection of those policies. I am sure that many Americans did not feel that their American citizenship was represented by that flag back then, and it is just as likely that this is true now. I imagine that the display of the American flag evokes a wide range of emotions in citizens as disparate as we Americans are as a people. But, perhaps naively, I have always believed that at least symbolically, all Americans were welcome under the big tent that the American flag was meant to represent as the country continuously strives to become “a more perfect union.”

Somehow, the abundant display of American flags on display that I see on my walks and travels today feels different to me. All those flags waving in the breeze—on buildings, homes, flagpoles, cars, trucks, heavy equipment—do they still represent a shared symbol of American democracy—all that it is and all that it can be—that “big tent” aspiration that we as a democracy continue hold as our ideal? Or are some of those flags saying, maybe even shouting, something different at me as I pass by them? Does the flag still represent “One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all”? Or are some of the flags I see in my travels saying, “We are the true America, and this is OUR flag.” I feel the undercurrents of these unspoken flag messages as I walk past them, and I wonder, who is the “WE?” Has our country’s inclusive “big tent” ideal been dialed back? Have we become a nation of “us” and “them”—“dueling flags”?