The Stars and Stripes: Are They Fading?

One of my earliest memories of my grandmother, Momo, is at the annual Flagstaff Indian Parade. It was the year she turned seventy, and with her broken hip struggled every day with tasks she thought nothing of thirty years earlier. Sitting or walking was okay, but getting from one position to the other wasn’t. She never complained, she just persevered.  

I was three years old that summer of 1955, and I was in awe. I sat on the curb with my older brother and sister, and waited for the parade to make it to our perch. Momo was sitting in her green-and-white webbed lawn chair, a fixture under our mulberry tree at home in Phoenix. We looked down the street, hearing the bands playing, waiting for our first glimpse of the parade’s leaders.

“On your feet, kids!” Momo prompted. “Here come the colors.” Now, I didn’t know what the “colors” were. But I watched my grandmother stand stiffly and place her hand over her heart as the flag was carried past. And so, I did the same, then and every time the flag went by – because Momo did. And I’ve done it ever since.  I know now why I love this country, much of it fostered by conversations with my grandmother. But then I mimicked her as she showed her love for America by respecting its symbol.

In 2010 Aunt Betsy and I went to the Gallup Tribal Powwow, and as I stood there I remembered Flagstaff. The crowd was noisy, trinket salespeople were hawking their wares, babies were crying. Then we heard the drums. “They’re starting!” I blurted.

Aunt Betsy, Momo’s youngest, was 88 that summer, and she has a bad back, the remnant of a car accident when she was 15. Epidurals help, but the pain is constant. And she never complains, she just perseveres.

As the flag passed by, she struggled up from the seat of her walker and placed her hand over her heart. I did, too. Two or three others joined us. But mostly everyone continued visiting, buying soda, and eating.

By the time the parade was over, we had saluted the flag fourteen times. By the eighth or ninth time we were alone, others weary of the standing and sitting. Patriotism is going out of style, it appears.

Our granddaughters watched part of the Olympics with us this year. As the American flag was hoisted during a medal ceremony, Hannah asked me if I love the United States.

“Let me tell you about Flagstaff – and Momo.” I smiled. And so I did.