Blowing in the Wind

We bought a flag this year. It isn’t a huge deluxe flag. It isn’t a small hand waving flag. We bought the $10 Big Lots special package complete with mounting rod and pole. We bought it because we finally have a place to mount one. We bought it because I looked at my husband when we saw the box of them and said “What do you think?” We bought it because his reply was “Yah.” No big deal.


That is until we got home. We were still unloading the groceries when he grabbed the package. The mount was on before the milk and eggs had been put away! I put everything down and opened the door to join him just in time to hear him explaining to our youngest girls the rules of flag respect. Don’t let it touch the ground, bring it in when it’s dark, replace it if it gets ragged, etc.

I’m ashamed to say that my first thought was ALL THIS for a $10 flag, he’s got to be kidding! My second thought was to wonder how we had missed teaching the girl’s this already. All our older children knew these things. My third thought came a little later. It was a thought of love and respect for my husband when I noticed flag and pole rolled up in the corner of our kitchen as I went about turning out light at bedtime.

My fourth thought was the one that overwhelmed me. It occurred the next morning as I was preparing breakfast. I glanced out the window and noticed he had already put it up. There was a good breeze blowing it proudly back and forth. A phrase from a Bob Dylan song popped into my head and I softly sang, “The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind.”

I know the song was anti-war. So was I when it first came out. But I’ve grown up a lot since then. I had older cousins serve in Vietnam, good friends in Desert Storm and two of my sons are serving in Afghanistan now. I was watching as the Twin Towers fell. A friend from church was on a plane that day. His plane as others was ordered to land. As passengers and crew disembarked together to the horrific sights on the terminal TV’s, the co-pilot’s phone rang. It was his wife. She was on the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. With no time to go somewhere private, he said his final goodbyes.

So these thoughts raced through my head as I watched my $10 flag wave in the breeze. I remembered the question, “How many deaths does it take till we know that too many people have died? The answer my friend is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind.”

The price of a flag- $10, the price of freedom priceless, that’s the view from my side of the street today. What’s yours?