The Small View

My eyes got hooked by the waving of the flag this morning. It filled this one corner of this one windowpane, and after a while of regarding it from that angle, there was something marvelous about it: the small view.

Now my flag is a poor specimen of a flag. My dad would not be pleased. The flag is one of the few things he had that “there’s a right way and a wrong way” attitude about.

We had a flagpole in our front yard growing up but not right away. I think we got it about the time I was ten ‘cause I remember him taking me out there – right out in the front yard in full view of the busy street, to learn to fold the flag, one triangle at a time. The wave-able nylon flag was already floating overhead and it was a military issue flag, the cotton kind that they put over the coffins of veterans, that we practiced on. He kept telling me to pull it tight the way you have to do your sheets if you want to put them on your bed without wrinkles, or fold them in your linen closet in that neat way that you see in other people’s homes. I still have to lay mine on the bed to do my folding since I don’t feel the need to call someone to help me pull them tight. But I can remember doing that now and again with the girls when they were young, and the way the sheets would get pulled out of their little hands when I’d try to snap them taut, and that’s about what happened with my dad and me in the yard, and of course, you’re not supposed to let the flag hit the ground.

We’ve got a finer flag pole than my dad ever had and I had a real intention to keep a flag waving in his honor after he died, but for some reason I can’t get too upset over my flag’s frayed edges. The pole stands too close to a couple of spindly trees that nonetheless grow taller every time Donny cuts them back. Then the flag waves and catches on the edges of the branches.

The flag didn’t catch once this morning, just waved and waved, sailing this way and that with what seemed as if it must be a high strong wind even though the trees themselves weren’t doing much swaying. On the ground, eye-catching in a lower pane of the window, a green tarp full of leafs flapped and wiggled like a giant lizard.

It was mesmerizing to watch the day dawn through that one windowpane with the undulating flag, its movement like a symphony. I’d never done it before. I liked the look of the stringy edge, like one of the fashionable silk scarves designed with a trail of fringe, probably for that very feel of movement and lightness.

After a while Henry came in and sat with me. Since the time change he’s been watching the dawning of the day with me fairly often. He bursts into my room announcing that the day is here and then, still awash with sleep, does about the only cuddling he still does, and the only quiet sitting, and he notices when the sun comes up like a ball and when it doesn’t. This morning he, too, noticed the flag.