Roads & Rhythms

Dear American Flag,

Today, you turn 250. 🇺🇸

Two hundred and fifty years is an astonishing age for a country. In the long timeline of the world, it can still seem young. But in the life of a person, it is almost impossible to comprehend.

You have lived through founding and fracture, war and rebuilding, grief and celebration, mistakes and repair. You have flown over battlefields, classrooms, front porches, military bases, small-town parades, state capitols, cemeteries, fire stations, ballparks, courtrooms, and quiet homes where people simply wanted to believe that tomorrow could still be better.

I have seen you all my life. I grew up standing for the Pledge of Allegiance before the school day began. Hand over heart. Eyes toward you. Words memorized before I could fully understand them.

At the time, I knew the rhythm more than the meaning. I knew when to stand. I knew where to place my hand. I knew the words I was supposed to say. But I did not yet understand who you were. I did not understand the weight of your colors, the history folded into your fabric, or the responsibility hidden inside those familiar words.

That came later.

I think I truly met you on September 11, 2001. I was 15 years old. As I reflect on it, what will be its 25th anniversary this year still feels like it happened just yesterday.

On that 9/11 morning, I walked into my high school chemistry class expecting an ordinary day. But my teacher—the funny, joking, hippie-like, easygoing teacher who usually carried lightness into the room—was crying. The room felt different before I even knew why. Something had happened. Something was still happening.

The first plane had hit the World Trade Center. At that age, I did not fully understand what the World Trade Center was. I did not know its place in the skyline or its symbolic weight. I only knew that adults were scared, and that whatever was happening was large enough to stop the normal routine of school, this entire country, and even the world in its tracks.

In the hallways between classes, everything was silent. Not the usual teenage noise. Not lockers slamming, friends laughing, footsteps rushing, or complaints about homework. It was the kind of silence that makes you aware of every breath. Teachers stood in their doorways with heavy faces, as if simply standing there was the only steadiness they could offer us.

By Spanish class, the Twin Towers had collapsed. Being a twin myself, the perspective hit differently. Continuous news replays showed a near perfect vertical fall of two 110-floor buildings.

My teacher hardly spoke any words. I remember her shocked facial expression that didn’t fade all class period. I think she was truly speechless. She had pulled out the television cart, and together we quietly watched history unfold in real time, with disbelief. I remember turning away from the screen and looking out the classroom window directly behind my back row desk. Outside, the day looked peaceful. The sky was calm. The school grounds were still. —And yet, hundreds of miles away, chaos, terror, death, and impossible courage were happening all at once.

That contrast has never left me.

A peaceful day outside the window.

A nation wounded on the screen.

We did not learn academics that day. We learned about humanity.

In the hours, days, and years that followed, I saw you differently. Your stars and stripes were so bold, it was impossible to look away.

I saw firefighters walking toward burning towers when every instinct in the human body would have understood running away. I saw police officers guiding people to safety, trying to bring order to the chaos moving through smoke and fear—not just across a few blocks, but through all of lower Manhattan. I saw first responders covered in ash, exhausted and injured, still searching, still helping, still refusing to stop.

I saw ordinary people become shelter for one another. I saw businesses open their doors and pull people inside as thick, pitch-black smoke swallowed the streets around them. I saw strangers reach for strangers. I saw grief become service.

And I learned that courage was not only rising in New York.

It was rising at the Pentagon too, where another plane struck the heart of our nation’s defense. In an instant, service members, civilians, first responders, and ordinary people were called into a moment no one should ever have to face.

It was also rising in the sky above Pennsylvania, where passengers aboard Flight 93 learned that their plane had been hijacked and understood that it was being used as a weapon. Knowing their own lives were almost certainly already lost, they called the people they loved, prayed, made a plan, and chose to fight back. They rushed the cockpit together, forcing the hijackers away from their intended target in Washington, D.C.

They could not save themselves, but they may have saved countless others. Their final act remains one of the clearest pictures of sacrifice I have ever known: ordinary Americans, trapped in an impossible moment, choosing to protect people they would never meet. A kind of patriotism that makes you wonder if you’d have the courage to do the same.

I also heard things I wish I had never heard. The sounds of that day became part of the memory too. I was witnessing it from afar on a TV, yet it felt so close. The screaming. The confusion. The calls from people on hijacked planes saying goodbye to the people they loved. The collapse of towers that had seemed too strong, too tall, too permanent to fall. The crash in an open field in Pennsylvania. The beeping of emergency alarms from firefighters lost in the rubble. The silence after.

There are images I cannot unsee. There are stories I cannot unknow. And perhaps that is part of what it means to remember.

2,977 people lost their lives in just a few hours that day, in a coordinated attack carried out by 19 terrorists. On our soil you watched in horror and sadness, yet you continued to wave high in the sky to offer strength, and most importantly hope.

The cleanup at Ground Zero took months, carried out by crews working around the clock. More than 1.8 million tons of debris were removed so the search, recovery, and rebuilding could continue. And even now, the number of people impacted by 9/11-related illnesses continues to grow, as first responders, survivors, and recovery workers face cancers and other conditions linked to the toxins they breathed in that day.

For years afterward, our country remembered together. Documentaries and live footage played continuously to ensure we never forget. Names were read aloud. Families gathered. Churches filled. Candles were lit. Concerts raised money. Flags appeared everywhere—not as decorations, not as branding, not as symbols of a political side, but as a shared language of mourning, honor, unity, and resolve.

On one ordinary day turned tragic, where smoke tried to cover you from being seen, the hearts of every American changed. How could it not?

For a while, it seemed we understood you.

We understood that freedom was not abstract.

We understood that safety was not automatic.

We understood that service was not small.

We understood that firefighters, police officers, paramedics, nurses, doctors, military members, and so many others carry burdens most of us will never fully see or could ever comprehend.

We also understood why new forms of protection came into being after that day. The Department of Homeland Security was not born out of theory or politics, but out of the rubble of a country trying to understand how such an attack had happened on American soil and how to better protect its people from another one. Agencies and roles often debated today have origins many younger people may never have been taught. Before they became headlines, acronyms, arguments, or assumptions, they were part of a national response to a wound we promised not to forget.

We understood that history was not something trapped in a textbook. It was something we were living inside.

“9/11 is made up of little stories of people doing small things or making small decisions, which turned out to be the difference between life and death.”

— FDNY Chief Joseph Pfeifer
(the first fire chief to respond to the WTC attacks)

And I think that was the first time I understood your colors.

Red was no longer just red. It was valor. Bravery. Blood willingly risked for someone else’s life.

White was no longer just white. It was innocence. The ordinary people who went to work, boarded planes, answered calls, taught classes, opened shops, and never came home.

Blue was no longer just blue. It was vigilance. Perseverance. Justice. The long, steady work of protecting what is good, even when the world becomes frightening.

You taught me that a flag is not only fabric.

A flag can hold memory.

A flag can hold grief.

A flag can hold a promise.

And now, on your 250th birthday, I find myself looking up at you again.

You still fly.

But I wonder if you are tired.

Not because your meaning has changed, but because ours keeps shifting around you.

People have attached you to political arguments, party labels, news cycles, personalities, movements, and assumptions. Some distort your meaning. Some stomp and burn you. Some treat you like a symbol for one side instead of a symbol meant to rise above all sides. Some wave you loudly without understanding the responsibility you carry. Others reject you without understanding the freedom that allows them to do so.

And I wonder if that breaks your heart. It breaks mine a little.

“You still fly.
But I wonder if you are tired.
Not because your meaning has changed,
but because ours keeps shifting around you.”

Because you have never belonged to only one kind of American.

You have flown over people who vote differently, worship differently, work differently, live differently, and see the world differently. You have covered the caskets of those who served. You have welcomed immigrants who arrived with hope and humility, who came not only seeking freedom but ready to honor it—learning English as a second language so they could participate more fully, studying our history, embracing the freedoms and responsibilities that shape this country, working hard, sharing their knowledge and skills, contributing to our growth, and wrapping themselves in the promise of America with gratitude.

You have stood in classrooms where children learned the first language of citizenship. You have waved over Olympic podiums, small-town baseball fields, courthouse steps, and welcoming front porches where families simply wanted to feel proud of the place they call home.

A safe, welcoming, and cozy home where families can experience a full life of building rich memories.

It is a simple dream Americans have always reached for, and it carries a special kind of work ethic and determination. It is part of what makes Americans strong, admirable, and inspiring. We work hard toward dreams because we know they mean more when they are built, not simply handed to us.

You are not perfect because no country made by human beings can be perfect.

But you are still profound.

You represent an idea that has asked generation after generation to keep growing into its own promise: liberty, responsibility, self-government, courage, sacrifice, equal dignity, and the belief that people can build something better than what they inherited.

That is not a political message.

That is a human one.

And I worry that we are forgetting it.

I worry that we have become so loud that we can no longer listen. I worry that we have become so certain that we can no longer learn. I worry that we have mistaken cynicism for wisdom, and outrage for virtue. I worry that young people are inheriting arguments before they inherit understanding. I worry that many of us know how to criticize the country before we know how to study it, serve it, repair it, or appreciate the freedoms that allow criticism to exist in the first place.

I worry that history is becoming either a weapon or an embarrassment, when it should be a teacher.

“You are not perfect because no country made by human beings can be perfect. But you are still profound.”

History does not ask us to pretend everything was good. It asks us to pay attention.

It asks us to remember what courage costs. It asks us to notice what happens when people lose the ability to speak freely, think freely, vote freely, build freely, question freely, practice faith freely, and live without fear of the state or the crowd deciding what they are allowed to believe. To live under ordered liberty—where freedom is protected, but responsibility still matters.

History asks us to see patterns. It asks us to be humble. It asks us not to assume that freedom automatically survives because it has survived so far.

History has a way of warning us before it repeats itself. Sometimes the warning is loud. Sometimes it is quiet. Sometimes it creeps in slowly through disguise. Sometimes it comes through violence, and sometimes through forgetting. But when history reveals what hatred can become, we should be humble enough to believe it, remember it, and teach it carefully.

That may be the thing I feel most deeply as you turn 250.

Freedom is not self-sustaining. It has to be taught, protected, and practiced. It has to be handed down with reverence, not arrogance. With gratitude, not entitlement. With honesty, not hatred. With courage, not silence.

“To live under ordered liberty—where freedom is protected, but responsibility still matters.”

I am not interested in writing a political essay, because I do not believe you are a political symbol. I am not interested in telling people what to think, who to support, or how to vote. Those are private decisions that deserve serious thought, honest research, humility, conscience, and the freedom to arrive there on one’s own.

“We the People” were never meant to think in perfect sameness. Never meant to mold into one solo party. We were entrusted with the freedom, and the responsibility, to learn, question, discern, and decide.

But I am interested in saying this:

I love this country, and I am a proud patriot.

I am grateful I was born here. I am grateful for the soil beneath my feet, for the freedoms I inherited, and for the people I will never meet who sacrificed so I could live with choices they did not always get to enjoy themselves.

I am grateful that I can follow the creative pull in me without boundaries or constraints. That I can write. That I can ask questions. That I can start businesses and build work I love. That I can study, work, practice faith, speak, travel, build, change my mind, and pursue a life shaped by meaning.

I am grateful for a country where free enterprise and imagination have been allowed to work together—where people can take risks, build businesses, invent tools, solve problems, create industries, and turn ideas into progress. That freedom to build has helped America lead in technology, medicine, education, entrepreneurship, and creative advancement, opening doors to industries and possibilities that did not even exist when you were first raised.

I am grateful that people are still drawn here by the possibility of becoming, building, and beginning again.

That is no small thing.

There are people across the world who still risk everything to reach the freedoms we sometimes treat casually. There are families who come here not because America is flawless, but because the promise is still powerful. They come to work, contribute, study, serve, raise families, open businesses, and participate in the ongoing story.

That is the best version of the American melting pot to me.

Not sameness.

Shared responsibility.

Not erasing where people come from.

Choosing to help strengthen where we now stand together.

You have seen that across 250 years. You have grown from 13 stars to 50, and every star still matters. Not just the loudest states. Not just the most visible cities. Not just the people who dominate the conversation.

All 50 states.

All part of the same sky of fabric. That is what I wish more of us remembered. We are not as separate as we have been taught to feel. We are living on one shared timeline.

When I was younger, I thought history was boring because I thought it was external to me. It felt like old names, old dates, old wars, old documents, old speeches. Things that happened before me, to people I did not know, in places that seemed far away.

Now I understand it differently. History is not behind us. We are in it. We are simply later in the chapter. And one day, someone will look back at us and ask what we did with what we were given.

Did we protect it?

Did we understand it?

Did we cheapen it?

Did we hand it down stronger?

Did we remember?

“History is not behind us. We are in it.
We are simply later in the chapter.”

On your 250th birthday, I want to celebrate you.

I want to hear the national anthem and feel the familiar rise in my chest.

I want to watch fireworks bloom above the rooftops while families gather under the blue evening light, kids running through quaint neighborhood streets with sparklers flickering in their hands like tiny stars of their own.

I want to remember the kind of neighborhood where people knew one another’s names. Where parents talked from porch steps and driveways while children played nearby. Where neighbors asked how the kids were doing, what they were doing lately, what they were dreaming about, and how life was really going.

Where we listened to understand. Where we sympathized and supported each other. Where we learned from each other. Where we laughed and cried together. Where we looked out for each other. Where we deeply grew up together—not behind gates or inside oversized houses, but in modest homes made rich by belonging.

I want to see the true American Dream shine—not as wealth or status, but as family, faith, work, freedom, friendship, and the quiet dignity of building a good life among people who care.

I want to hear Ray Charles’ “America the Beautiful” floating from garage speakers and open doors, carried through the summer air as neighbors talk from driveways, porch lights glow softly, and the whole block feels, for a few sacred hours, like one shared front porch.

I want to think of ballfields and summer nights, porches and parades, veterans standing a little taller when you pass by, and children waving small flags with no idea yet how much history they are holding in their hands.

That, to me, is one of the truest American experiences: not grand or glamorous, not measured by wealth or attention, but rooted in belonging, gratitude, community, and shared life. It is the kind of experience I grew up with, the kind I miss, and the kind I hope everyone gets to know in their own way

.

But more than celebrate you, I think I want to pray for you.

For us.

For this country.

For a nation marked by the words In God We Trust—etched into our currency, woven into our civic memory, and still reminding us that freedom asks for humility.

I pray we become worthy of the freedoms we inherited.

I pray we honor the people who serve quietly, bravely, and often invisibly.

I pray we learn history deeply enough not to repeat its darkest patterns.

I pray we understand the difference between freedom and power, between independence and control.

I pray we respect all cultures without losing sight of our own—the one that continues to draw people here.

I pray we recognize the value of tolerance while also understanding the need for boundaries.

I pray we can disagree without dehumanizing.

I pray we can debate without destroying.

I pray we can recover the difference between honest criticism and contempt.

I pray we remember that gratitude is not blindness, and love of country is not denial.

I pray we continue to challenge and grow our own character.

I pray we teach young people not what to think, but how to think for themselves.

I pray we value the entrepreneurship, invention, and creative risk that bring us advancements we often take for granted.

I pray we recognize all 50 of your stars, not just a select few.

I pray we learn to carry both truth and reverence, and that when new information humbles us, we have the courage to change our minds.

I pray we stop treating you like a political symbol and start seeing you again as a national promise.

So happy 250th birthday, dear American Flag.

You may be weathered.

You may be tired.

You may be misunderstood.

But you are still flying.

And as long as you are, I hope we keep looking up—not in worship of a country, but in gratitude for the freedom to keep building one.

With a full heart,
An American who remembers