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I just caught up with the essay in the New York Times Magazine
by writer Anne Bernays about her dismay at her grandson, David,
becoming a Marine. His decision was an incomprehensible turn of events
for Bernays. After all, she writes, she is a liberal Jew who raised her
family in Cambridge, Mass. Her children went to the "best schools."
They had "no money worries." In other words, people like this simply do
not produce Marines. At David's graduation, she has a conflicted sense
of pride in his accomplishments. But nowhere does she question ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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May I treat this blog as a touchy-feely women’s group for a moment and share something that happened to me this weekend? I was walking with my 2-year-old daughter in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park when, coming over a hill, we caught sight of a huge American flag—I’m talking huge, like half the size of a football field—spread out over the grass of the great lawn. Kids were running up and down the length of the flag while grown-ups sat cross-legged at intervals, sewing on stars and stripes. As it turned out, this was part of a local Obama fundraiser called the Mending Bee for Change; you could contribute by buying a star or get sponsored to stitch the flag.
I didn’t have a cent on me, so my only contribution was a grass stain created when my kid went for a vigorous roll on Old Glory. But something about seeing that homemade parachute-silk flag spread out on the grass, being quietly mended by some and merrily trampled by others, gave me a feeling I don’t think I’ve had in its pure form since childhood: I guess you could call it patriotism, but really it was more like (to use a word that’s nearly been denuded of meaning in this endless campaign) hope. It was just so moving to experience the American flag, not as something politicians brandish to prove a point (I wear one on my lapel! Oh yeah, well, I wear a big sparkly one on my lapel! Hey, I propose amendments against burning them!), but as something for people to gather around, dance on, and mend.
I’m not a believer in the Obamessiah by any stretch—in fact, I pity whichever one of the candidates inherits the mess we’re in. Especially with the economic wreckage now being handed to him, how can our next leader not be a disappointment? But whatever happens, we’re at a historic moment: possibly on the brink of electing an African-American president, yes, but also on the brink of ending a war, creating a national health-care program, and (O frabjous day!) sending George Bush off to cut brush in Crawford, Texas, forever. On Saturday I allowed myself, for a moment, to imagine my future self telling my grown daughter about the time she played ghost underneath an enormous American flag. That was right before Obama got elected, I’d say, and things started to change.