Freedom’s voice will find a way to speak. What will history say about how we chose to use it?
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A giant American flag flows in the wind from the back of a pickup truck as I drive to Starbucks to get my hot tea this morning. The feelings which arise in me as a response are complicated. I am reminded of waiting in line to see the Liberty Bell and these words I saw tucked up in one of the cases to tell our nation’s story.
“History is not neat,” the words are an odd plum color under the thick plastic, “It is complicated and messy,” they are pointed and march forward with their honesty. “It is about people, places, and events that are both admirable and deplorable.”
It has a lot of ugly patches.
Nineteen years old and our lives had just been turned upside down by brutal attacks on New York and the Pentagon. We were unsure what came next but we knew it was our responsibility to show our patriotism.
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I’m also thrown back to a late night car ride fourteen years ago. It had been a very long day. It was a day we thought would never end, one that changed our lives and stole our innocence forever. Bryan and I had just finished wandering the aisles of Wal-Mart that early September evening looking for Old Glory. The shelves were bare. The only thing we could find were two tiny little flags stuck on wooden poles like pencils, the kind you might find on a teacher’s desk. We bought them. It felt like our duty. Nineteen years old and our lives had just been turned upside down by brutal attacks on New York and the Pentagon. We were unsure what came next but we knew it was our responsibility to show our patriotism. Brave faces needed to be worn. One of our professors had told us as much earlier that day.
Bryan was my friend and classmate. We had sat together in Music History shortly after the second tower was hit.“We will be having class today,” the tiny woman with the blonde bun at the base of her neck proclaimed fiercely. “We will be having class today because if we don’t then terrorists have succeeded in bullying us into changing the way we do life. No. I’m not cancelling class. You’re going to learn something today.” A small act of rebellion I think of often.
So, Bryan and I bought our tiny flags and proceeded to drive all over town with the windows rolled down waving them. We were for America. People honked. They leaned out their windows and shouted, “God bless America.” They waved their flags back at us. Tears mingled with the dust on the sides of their cars and trucks and minivans. There was bonding. We were all in this thing together.
People of every color and sexual orientation and gender identification and religious belief, they all waved and cried. Later that week I saw complete strangers hug each other in grocery stores. They went out of their way to make sure other people had what they needed. I saw people loving each other well.
We were brought together, but also we began to be torn apart.
I lost my innocence about being an American that day. Maybe about being human. I learned that it is easy to be patriotic and brave when everyone is honking and waving and crying you down the street. I also learned that I had the ability to be a coward and that prejudice could pop up even inside of me when I was terrified. That was something I had never seen. It was ugly. And I swore to never allow it to happen again.
Earlier before Bryan and I had gone to buy our flags and spread patriotic fever, a friend and I had wanted to watch the news. TVs were not allowed at the private Christian college we attended, so we went to a restaurant nearby. Several Greyhound buses had been grounded in the parking lot and passengers streamed in while we curled up in a back booth. Three men in turbans walked in. I know now that they were Sikhs. This wasn’t even a part of my vocabulary at the time. I was so unaware of the world around me. The two of us looked at each other in fear.
There aren’t many things I would do over in my life, but that is one.
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They walked over to the table next to ours and sat down. One nodded at us and they all looked scared. I looked away. And when I looked at her there was silent agreement. It was time to leave.
As I walked out to the car, my stomach knotted with the knowledge that my actions were wrong. I could feel it. There was nothing evil about those men. They were scared, just like I was.
There aren’t many things I would do over in my life, but that is one. I would have walked over. I would have said hello. I would have asked if I could have assisted them in some way. I would have said “Isn’t it horrible?” And “Is your family safe?” All the words. But I didn’t. And I live with that moment. It changed me. Now I love better. I try to judge less.
This morning when I saw that giant American flag flowing gloriously behind that big old truck as it sailed down the road I didn’t feel the same innocent rush I had felt that night driving with Bryan. Instead I thought of all the ‘Murica memes and the barrage of racist and prejudice rhetoric I see day after day pop up on social media and in the news. I love my country. I love the freedoms she gives me. I am thankful for the women and men who have fought and do fight and have given their lives for those freedoms for me and for each of her citizens.
And yet amidst all of the glory and the red, white, and blue, there is a lot of flowing crimson.
The bloody kind that isn’t glorious. The kind you don’t write songs about. The kind most people rewrite history to cover up. That day I visited the Liberty Bell, I saw a memorial close to the entrance which read, “Go back to the past to build the future.” The guard at the entrance adjusted her hijab as she eyed a group of elementary school children ahead of us. They grouped together for selfies, breaking apart, shuffling back again. Their faces pressed together in variations of a flesh rainbow. We stepped inside to more story and I learned a truth that left me cursing.
The Liberty Bell doesn’t make a sound.
The last time it rang was in 1835 at the death of Chief Justice John Marshall, when the infamous crack became more prominent. As The Public Ledger noted in 1846, “The venerable relic of the revolution (is) irreparably cracked…”The symbol for our nation’s freedom was rendered silent. I kept reading.
There aren’t many things I would do over in my life, but that is one.Susan B. Anthony used the Liberty Bell as the backdrop to reading her “Women’s Declaration of Rights and Articles of Impeachment Against the United States.” In 1965, civil rights demonstrations were held in front of the Bell to show that its ideas were still needed. And over one image, I read the words of Nelson Mandela calling the Liberty Bell, “a significant symbol for the entire democratic world.”
We live in the tension of this fact… history is not neat. It is messy.
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I am no more that wide-eyed nineteen year old. I live in the complicated. We live in the tension of this fact… history is not neat. It is messy. Our history is messy. And lately we have been creating a lot more in the way of ugly history but we have also done some things that we can be proud of too. I have seen us be our best selves in the past few months and the most vile expressions of what humanity has to offer. Just because we are a bit cracked and have lost the freshness of our innocence, doesn’t mean we can’t be what we were intended to be. And let us remember what we, these United States of America, were intended to be…
It is because of differences that she was envisioned.
It is because of freedoms she was created.
It was in order to celebrate the ability to be oneself that she was founded.
Freedom’s voice will find a way to speak. What will history say about how we chose to use it?
Originally Published at BedlamMag.com
I enjoyed your piece, Melissa! Important topic! I appreciate your introspection and honesty.