Made in America

Not too long ago, high school students in California were sent home for wearing the American flag on their clothing. They weren't doing so in a disrespectful manner, but as a show of support for their heritage. I'm beyond stunned.

The flag is not a symbol of political correctness. It is a sacred symbol of a nation. A representation of a promise of freedom. Freedom to life and liberty. The freedom for the law abiding citizen to protect their family and what they hold dear. Freedom to work hard and prosper and enjoy the fruits of your honest labor without fear that it will be forced from you to support the degradation of the Constitution. The flag is more than fabric, it's a promise. I am an American, and I will honor the flag, wrapping myself around it as a patriot would, to protect it, not wrapping it around words or actions to justify that which we know to be a breach of this promise.

On the days I'm working closer to home, the drive home is a leisurely one through open cornfields. Being raised out West, it's taken me a bit of time to get used to "flat" even after being here for years. Now you might say, like the poets did, that the land "gently rolled" but that would be implying way too much action on the earth's part. Other than the occasional wooded down slope into some low creek and river land, it's flat. Plain and simple. It is so different than Montana where my Mom and Dad are from, or from Seattle where I worked after college briefly.
When I first arrived, I noticed that I could drive for miles without seeing a Starbucks or a sushi place, and out of habit, I'd check the side of the roadway for elk, an action that even after years of more sky and less mountains, was still second nature for me. But here, the only large animals are in the corn, a multitude of unseen deer hiding like silent nuns from human contact and not likely to stray out in the roadway during the daylight hours.

On the day I moved here, the city where my Dad's Mom was from, I noticed that. Everywhere I looked were the remnants of corn, sentient rows of former proud stalks, that stood fading in the early winter air, dead to silent hints of abundant summer past. Summers of green and hard work and plenty. Yet though the texture of the landscape was unfamiliar I knew that where I stopped there would be one familiar thing, for every welcoming, every greeting, would be in English.
I can't remember all the many times in Miami or L.A. or Houston, when I stopped for gas or for directions, the response to my "hello" or "do you know where?" was anything but English. I couldn't even find a SIGN in English to help guide me in ever growing parts of some cities.

My Mom's parents were immigrants. My grandmother, though, like the Norwegian logger she eventually married, retained some of the customs and expressions and recipes of her native land. But she was very proud to learn the customs and the language of her new homeland as it was spoken. She came alone at age 18, surviving a long voyage in the most paltry of quarters deep within the ship; laying awake at night under a threadbare scratchy blanket, listening to an arpeggio of tiny rodent feet overhead, as she dreamt of the possibilities of liberty.

She arrived, without family, job or English skills, simply the necessary papers to be here legally, a little money her family had pressed into her hand, and a remarkable skill as a cook. She soon found lodging and work in a kitchen for a wealthy family. She found a new life, marrying and moving from Minnesota to Montana where my Mom and her two brothers were born very late in her life. But what I remember of her stories was how she very gratefully embraced, not only her new country, but the words of its President at the time.

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
Teddy Roosevelt - 1907
So when I moved so far away from the familiar, to this sea of corn, it was reassuring to shyly wander in anywhere and when I said "thank you", I heard "you bet!" in the language of my nation. Sure it might occasionally have an accent from birth in a land far away, but it was still the language of this country we have taken as our own, by birth, or by choice, spoken with pride.

People here are essentially good and I've made some wonderful friends in this state. That is why in the years I've lived here, I'm becoming more comfortable and less hesitant, as the area has embraced me even though I wasn't "local". I now join these hard working people, now my neighbors, as we make the drive into the city from our rural homes, catching the glimpse of silver grain elevators, waving fields of corn, red winged Cardinals, and 18 wheelers, all blending into a fluid diorama of the Midwest. The mountains of the West are far behind me. What is ahead of me, is the America of my heart, full of promise and honor, hard work and the ethics of owning what you make of your own hand, the values of our past. It's a part of the country where you can still get "In God We Trust" in big bold letters on your license plate if you want to.

You don't have to be born on this soil to be an American, but you need to make a conscious choice to embrace this land, not just reside in it, to truly be its citizen under the law. I am the granddaughter of immigrants, yet I am one of tens of thousands of proud Americans; those who will not back down from a fight, be it for our jobs, our land and our Constitution. There are those that would whip us down, we, the gallant, the proud and the brave, the acknowledged citizens of a land that has a history of courage and pride. To those people I too will stand my ground.

For I'm proud to be here, and make this my home. Like my ancestors, I retain some of the kitchen recipes and customs of their homelands. I keep some old and treasured bits of their art and fabric and glassware in my home on shelves my father made, proudly displayed. But it's the United States flag that hangs proudly from my porch and that of my neighbors.The drive home from the city to my home reveals a landscape of work. Land cleared and plowed, neat farm houses with fresh paint dotting the landscape like tiny flowers. The truck roars past it all with undiminished speed, and a toot of the horn to a farmer out working a field, the wave back as welcome as a hello. Before I get to my house, I stop in at the small, locally owned grocery store to get some makings for an early supper. As I leave, the checker, smiles warmly at me and said "are you from around here?". To which I promptly replied "you bet!"

This is small town America. A place where perhaps only a few hundred people know its name, this little town of people that reaches out and touches one another as we pass in and out of our daily lives, none too big that they won't somehow be touched, none too small that we will be forgotten. This is small town America. A place where men and women have lived and loved, whether they had time to truly reflect on all they were accomplishing.

This is my small town, where the names of those who came before remain, they who arrived on these shores and cleared this land, and sweated and sustained because they never expected to be given the land, they would have to earn it. These people, our grandparents and great grandparents and those before them, who arrived speaking many tongues, and tamed the wildness and swept west past the plains, growing and going on as the shape of America expanded with their will.

They are still here, in the land, in me, the names of who they are and the names of what they claimed and what they died for in the claiming, becoming just one resounding, sweet word that is mightier than any one man, as unlimited and clear as any prairie sky. That word is America. It is my home
--Brigid