Today I'm reclaiming our American flag. It's for all of us. ALL OF US.
My family is struggling financially. When times got tough, in order to pay the state and IRS, we doubled down, borrowed from friends, paid them back with interest. State is paid off. Our debt to the IRS from 2015 is down to two grand, and this year we're staying current.
We're proud to pay taxes. We want and expect our government to use our money for the common good. (Rather than wasting it by throwing out laboriously collected public health data or changing laws and starting wars to benefit wealthy donors … I already ranted about that in my first diary. Update: we have not only paid our friends back with interest, but we got Dog2 to the vet.)
A US flag was there when we moved in, displayed on the wall between our door and the windows of our next door neighbors. They didn't speak much English and I didn't speak much of their language, so when we talked we focused on the important topics. I never asked whether it was their flag, or just there when they moved in.
When they moved out, I adopted it. I also have my own high quality cotton flag in storage and I need to get it out soon. When trucks with US flags "roll coal" in the face of demonstrators, next time I'm going to be carrying our flag too.
My friends abroad see our flag and think of our interventionist foreign policies, of law enforcement killing and jailing black Americans in disproportionate numbers.
I explain: our flag also represents our dreams. Not just what we have been in the past (some of it inspiring; I support our military, just not some of the missions the civilians launched), or what we are now, but also what we can be. The flag is for all of us, as we work out how to move forward, together.
About this photo: last year one of us got cancer. Things went better than they could have ("we got the entire tumor, 6cm min on all sides, this is a slow growing kind so even if it recurs you might die of something else"). We paid for the surgery on credit. And then paid it off over time, with the proceeds of three challenging and low-paying jobs that we are extremely grateful to have.
But on Sunday, four days ago, they suddenly coughed up a lot of blood.
(We paid on credit for x rays and two doctors to read them. Ruled out another big tumor, inconclusive results otherwise. Medicare for all: health care personnel would appreciate being able to spend more time healing, and less time looking up regulations and trying to get approval from a tangle of insurance companies.)
At least I got the blood out of those jeans. Soaked them in cold water, scrubbed out the last of the stains, decided to dry them in the sun.
Clean blue denim jeans and a flag: what could be more American? So we took a photo. You can see a fire alarm box in there too. I think it's past time to use all the emergency levers we have available.
Happy Independence Day, from our family to yours. All kinds of families included. All of us!