Happy Flag Day!
I bet you didn't know it, but today is a holiday. Today, in the United States of America, we commemorate the adoption of the flag of the United States.
I admittedly have a shaky history with the American flag, but I do not have shaky history with my younger brother. And for me and my younger brother, Flag Day is one of the best days of the year.
We first began celebrating Flag Day seven(-ish?) years ago. My brother and I had just come home from an afternoon at the river. The skin on our cheeks and shoulders was taut and freckled with sun. My calves and hamstrings burned from the perilous hike up the steep rock cliffs that led to our own private oasis on the sun-baked river bank. We drove home in my shaky 1988 Honda Prelude, windows down blasting DC Talk and dancing carelessly, free. (Even now I'm not ashamed of my love for DC Talk)
At home we ravaged the kitchen for ice cold sodas—Cherry Pepsi for him, Diet Pepsi for me—still in our bathing suits.
“Aly, let’s make a cake,” Cameron declared as he flashed me his dimpled smile that gets him out of chores and punishment, even when he’s as guilty as a child caught sneaking cookies before dinner.
“Okay,” I conceded, not that it took much convincing.
“We don’t have cake mix,” he looked at me with the eyes of a wounded animal, but I already knew how to save the day.
“We could go to Mike’s,” I suggested. Mike’s was the convenience store right down the hill from us. We used to ride our bikes down to purchase candy bars for ourselves and milk for our mom. It hadn’t been called Mike’s for a couple of years since an Arab couple took over the store, but it would always be Mike’s to us.
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| Flag Day 2010 |
“We should bake the cake for Mom. When does she get home?” Cameron asked me. I was surprised at his spontaneous selflessness and felt a little guilty that I hadn’t thought of it first.
“That way she’ll give us money for it.” No need for guilt; there’s the Cameron I knew.
“We could say it’s a birthday cake, or maybe her half-birthday!” His excitement was growing as he schemed. Meanwhile I made my way over to the calendar, checking if there was some kind of holiday that was close enough to justify baking a cake.
June 14th. It was Flag Day.
I rushed to my room to throw on some clothes, yelling to Cameron to do the same.
“We’re going to Mike’s, Cameron! It’s Flag Day! Everyone needs a Flag Day cake!”
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| Flag Day 2011 |
Five minutes later clad in cut off shorts and old gymnastics t-shirts, my brother and I stood in front of the cake mixes preparing to make the most difficult decision of the summer thus far: what kind of cake is appropriate for a Flag Day celebration?
Our eyes greedily studied the sumptuous labels of rich, moist, luscious cakes, and then stopped scanning at exactly the same time. I turned to Cameron and met his brilliant blue eyes as we both broke into a smile.
“Yellow cake, chocolate frosting,” we said in unison.
With those fateful words and that first delicious Flag Day cake, we've been celebrating Flag Day ever since. My mouth is watering just thinking about the tasty cake we will (hopefully) bake tonight. What's more, Flag Day is an excuse to spend time with one of my favorite people on earth, my brother.
Happy Flag Day, everyone! Do you have any fun family traditions/excuses to spend time with each other?
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To read more about my incredibly talented little brother, click here, or to listen to the delightful and soulful and just downright impressive beats he creates, click here. And keep an eye out for our obligatory Flag Day 2012 picture later this week.
Hope in a Hurricane
I spent the last week on “vacation” visiting relatives near the Outer Banks of North Carolina. If you’re thinking “Outer banks, that sounds familiar. Where have I heard that recently?” That’s right, the Outer banks was where hurricane Irene made landfall early, early Saturday morning.
After a day of boarding up houses, taking down porch swings, relocating porch plants to a card table in the living room, and driving cars and trucks to higher ground, you would have thought I’d sleep like a baby. But as the wind howled outside my window and the power flickered the air conditioning on and off, I couldn’t sleep. In my near dreaming delirium, I half expected waves of floodwater to crash through my windows at any moment. When I finally slept, it was short lived.
Although I had been excited for the adventure, I have to admit I was pretty scared when I took that first dark step into the front yard water, debris and downed tree limbs floating by, the propane tank bobbing in the waves. Once I reached the safe (and higher) haven of my relative’s home next door, there was nothing much left for me to do but dry off and wait.
Wait and hope and pray that the tidewaters would stop their threatening surge. That the howling and the wind and the waves crashing on the doorstep (ocean waves on the doorstep?!) would recede. That the salty water wouldn’t seep into my cousin’s home, destroying floors and carpets, refrigerators and valuables.
In the midst of the waiting and the hoping and praying, God doled out another unwarranted fit of compassion. Because in addition to wind and waves and fear, that day, in the eye of the hurricane, I experienced peace, rest, and the richness of time spent with family.
The rising tide meant we couldn’t go anywhere. I was trapped. Trapped with my wonderful family, including my new favorite human being: my cousin’s baby boy, Macon. (see left and tell me you don’t agree) Poor me.
In addition to babbling baby time, I also had time to rest. To rest and reflect and spend time in prayer. To dream and scheme and breathe.
And while I was journaling and reflecting, I was able to connect with my cousin’s grandmother (my cousin’s grandmother on the other side, so no direct relation to me). She saw me reading and journaling, and asked if I was writing my prayers, which I was. From there we bonded over our love of words and writing, of putting our thoughts and hopes and dreams on paper. She read me poems she’d written for her grandchildren and spoke to me of the lessons she’s still learning as a great grandmother and daughter of God. She read me notes of encouragement and spoke words of love and affirmation into my own life.
I don’t know how to write about her without sounding too cheesy or sweet, but there really is no other way to describe the day and the time spent with her as sweet, filling, and life-giving in a way I can’t explain. It was yellow cake and chocolate frosting (which we ate later that day in celebration of surviving the hurricane) good.
As the eye of the hurricane moved closer, calming the swaying trees and lulling the misplaced tide, I was reminded of the line in my favorite T.S. Eliot poem that says, “So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
In the darkness of the storm and the stillness of the day indoors, my heart was dancing.
*Below are a few pics taken from the day of the storm. Also, I am very thankful to report that despite some minor damages to my cousin's house--her air conditioning and water pump were broken, her husband's truck flooded--none of my many, many family members in down east North Carolina had floodwater enter their homes.
My cousin Mollie's husband, Matt, forging the floodwaters.
The water rising in the garage--and the boots that would have served me much better than my nice flats for an early morning dip in the ocean.
The steeple of my family's church that was knocked down in the storm.
A tree uprooted in the storm.