The Precious Wound

Do you Remember When—after 9-11 when ... as a nation, we stood Tall and Proud?
Our pride swelled High
as the Twin Towers themselves.
Do you Remember When we were unapologetically displaying our American flags and in every possible place imaginable?
With swollen chests we Flew our flags in our yards, through our car windows and stuck them on our bumpers.
Remember When we placed flags in our living room windows and on our front doors?
We dressed our children in “I Love America” T-shirts.
Our greeting cards and our playing cards patriotically displayed our pride.
When business owners would showoff their homemade pride in their store front windows…
Or a simple patriotic ceramic candy bowl would sit at the check-in window at your doctor’s office.
The pen they offered us at the bank was red, white and blue.
The grocery store display, was created with Patriotic forethought.
And if you didn’t already own anything with ‘The Red, White and Blue’ on it you felt a sense of regret…and you went right out and bought something.
A blanket for the bed, maybe. A poster, a coffee mug. It didn’t really matter what.
Remember when pick-up truck owners would fasten an Enormous American Flag on the back and then drive down MAIN STREET USA, solely for the purpose of attracting turning heads, waving hands, beeping cars and Unity.
Flags would hang down over highway overpasses and we would have almost a moment of silence until we drove underneath them.
When as a terrorized and frightened nation… our Precious Wound was Shared!
When the accusation of bigotry wasn’t connected to ones Love of Country.
There was a sense of Unity. A palpable one. Compelling.
You would almost swear you could touch it.

Pride flowed through our veins with a Warm rush.
It was a shared wound, a wound that we each claimed, individually and jointly.
A wound - and a heartbreak, So Precious.

In the uniqueness of it all… there was a CONSCIOUSNESS of something Extraordinary.
And IN that consciousness, it made each of us Better.

There was a camaraderie on the street.
Discussions with strangers.
Old friends got in touch.
People went back to church.
People hugged.
We held doors for each other.
We said please and thank you.

Do You Remember that Precious Wound?
I Do!
That wound made me a better Human being and an unapologetic, Stand-Up, Come and Get it, BadAss American.
God help us all, if we EVER FORGET that precious, precious Wound.