The Patriot Post® · Homage to the Flag

(I wrote this piece several years ago, but I believe it bears repeating, especially when so many ingrates appear to take America for granted or, worse yet, regard the greatest nation ever devised by man and God with suspicion or even contempt.)

In the days and weeks following 9/11, friends and neighbors saw the American flag flying by my front door and assumed it was in remembrance of the people killed by Islamic terrorists. I didn’t bother correcting them because, by then, that was certainly part of my intention. The thing is, the flag had been out there for several months, but they just hadn’t noticed. Or maybe they just thought it was corny and didn’t want to comment. But, now, I think, is a good time to set the record straight.

I bought the flag because of my grandparents. I should explain I had never known my dad’s parents, both of whom died before I was born. I knew my mother’s parents, but could never speak to them. Although they had come to America in 1921, they never learned English. They could speak Russian and Hebrew, but they preferred Yiddish. I couldn’t converse in any of those languages. And, so, to me, my grandmother was this little old woman who would give me a wet kiss on the cheek while slipping a quarter into my hand.

My grandfather was a very quiet, skinny, bearded man who always wore a black frock coat, making him look like a short Abe Lincoln. A religious man, he went to shul twice a day to doven. When he was home, he spent his time reading the Torah, shelling lima beans or sipping tea through a sugar cube held between his front teeth.

In short, if my life were a movie, they’d have been dress extras.

So, why did I buy a flag because of those four people — two of whom I had never met and two of whom I had never spoken to? It’s simple. Because of sheer, unadulterated, gratitude.

You see, one day, on my way home, I began to think how lucky I was to have been born in America. Through no effort of my own, having made no sacrifice, taken no risk, I was the beneficiary of freedom, liberty, education, comfort, security and, yes, even a little luxury. It was not the first time I had acknowledged my amazing good fortune. The difference this time was that, for some reason, it suddenly dawned on me that my good luck hadn’t just happened. It had been the direct result of these four people pulling up stakes and moving thousands of miles, across an entire continent and the Atlantic Ocean, to a new country, pursuing a dream that their children and their children’s children, of whom I am one, might, just might, have better lives.

There were no guarantees. That was my epiphany. They had been denied the assurance of hindsight. They had done all this on a roll of the dice, only knowing for certain that there would be no turning back.

My father’s parents were illiterate peasants. My mother’s parents not only never spoke a word of English, but her father — although he had owned a small grocery store in Chicago — never, in 30 years, spoke on a telephone because he didn’t want to embarrass himself. But their grandson, bless their hearts, has enjoyed a career as a moderately successful writer. I doubt if any of them imagined anything so specific or anything quite that wonderful when they snuck across the Romanian border in the dead of night, but they had certainly heard a rumor that in America anything was possible.

The fact is, had those four individuals, all of whom were poor and barely, if at all, educated — their little children in tow — not somehow found the courage to undertake the journey, I would have been born a Jew in the Soviet Union in 1940. Between Stalin and Hitler, the odds are likely I would have wound up a slave in Siberia or a bar of German soap.

So, it happened that day when I was driving and thought about the enormous debt I owed those four intrepid souls, a debt I could never possibly repay, I decided to pull in at the local hardware store and buy a flag.

I thought it was something they’d have wanted me to do on their behalf. It wasn’t nearly enough, I know, but it was something.

Have a happy grateful 4th.