A Walker in the Suburbs

The inaugural festivities had already begun on Wednesday when I realized I had not hung our little flag. I stopped what I was doing (exercising on the elliptical), grabbed the flag and ran outside to the mailbox with it, where it proudly “flew” for the rest of the day.

It was not alone. Down on the National Mall, a “field of flags,” almost 200,000 of them, stood in for the people who would usually be there, waving their own flags. 

Wednesday was windy, a good day for flying flags. Their rippling made them look alive, the embodiment of all the hope and promise of a new era. 

(The flags seen from space, courtesy Planet Labs Inc.)

It’s been a happy coincidence that along with all the inaugural activities and excitement this week I’ve also been listening to the soundtrack of “Hamilton.” Since that Broadway musical has long since moved from smash-hit to iconic status, I feel like one of the last people to the parade … but hey, at least I made it!

To walk, dance and bounce to songs like “Satisfied,” “My Shot” and “You’ll Be Back” is to be reminded of all that this great country has to offer — the creativity, the humor, the jumble of life all packed into two-and-a-half-plus hours. 

But it was the four years ahead that was mostly on my (and most everyone else’s) mind yesterday. There was the call for unity and sacrifice that I hoped Biden would make. There were stirring marches and anthems and invocations. There was President Biden saying, “We have never ever ever ever failed when we have acted together,” to which late-night host Stephen Colbert later joked, “Someone clearly never saw the “Cats” movie.

But, kidding aside (and it feels luxurious to be silly), yesterday’s big happening was a four-Kleenex event for me, unexpectedly moving — and listening to “Hamilton” just amplified it. 

When the word came that Joseph R. Biden had been elected the 46th president of the United States, the country was well along on its Saturday morning. I’d just put the groceries away. Celia in Seattle seemed to have the word even before the news alert on my phone did.

There was no ringing of church bells, no banging of pots and pans or shooting off of firecrackers in my neighborhood, but there was one joyful family and, I assume, many joyful families throughout Folkstone, each celebrating in their own way, glad that a new era is dawning for this country.

I seldom write about politics in this blog — this week has been an exception — but today, especially, is a day worth noting. It’s not that the road won’t be steep and the going tough. But there is now a hope that we may come together as a country. And that is definitely worth celebrating. 

My self-imposed blackout lasted until about 6 p.m. yesterday. Forgoing media allowed me to be a little more productive and a little less anxious than I would have been otherwise. But then the floodgates were open, and I learned the razor-thin wire on which we walk, each side convinced that “there be dragons” on the other. 

In my saner moments, when I can step back from the fray, I continue wondering how we got to this place, this divided place. I’ve been reading and thinking about it for four years. But these musings are in the head, not the heart. And it’s my heart now that is pitter-pattering, as are millions of other hearts across this great land of ours. 

On Tuesday I stuck an American flag out by the mailbox, and it has flown there since. It seemed one way to reassert the position I’m trying so hard now to believe — that there is still more that unites us than divides us. 

I’ve been awake for hours and have seen only the barest shred of news, an update that appeared unbidden on my phone screen about the vote tally in Arizona. I’m trying to see how long I can hold out without looking at a news or social media site, without turning on the television or picking up the newspaper, which lies forlornly out by the forsythia bush. 

It’s not that I don’t want to know the current tallies. I’m as curious as the next person, I imagine. But I also know that once I look, the truth (whatever it is right now, even if inconclusive) will be with me — and I won’t be able to ignore it or wish it away.

So I’ve drifted through the day in my own bubble, writing in my journal and on this screen, exercising on the elliptical and stretching on the floor, making and sipping a cup of tea, tidying up. 

I know I can’t keep up this blackout forever. Curiosity will get the better of me and I’ll peak at some sites, learn some totals. But until then, I’m enjoying my own little news-free zone. It’s calm and cozy in here. 

It’s the birth anniversary of our first president, and I went in search of his words, thinking they might shed some light on the craziness of our current politics.

Here is an excerpt from his farewell address — in one paragraph a plea for peace and harmony, in the next a desire for forgiveness, and finally a request for a well-earned rest.

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. 


…


Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.


Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, and actuated by that fervent love towards it, which is so natural to a man who views in it the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever-favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.