While every day is special, June 14th was always special in my family when I was growing up. It was Grandpa Whitaker’s birthday. We always celebrated with a Flag cake later, when it was designated Flag Day, but when we were little, we always had strawberry shortcake, his favorite. I remember Grandpa because he smoked cigars and always gave me the paper ring around the fresh cigar and called me “his girl.” Grandma never let him smoke cigars in the house. They are rather stinky! But in his shop where he worked on canvas and leather orders for people, he not only smoked his cigars, but stored his supplies in old cigar boxes. I see on Ebay they are quite valuable. When he headed home for lunch or supper, he put out his cigars and threw the chewed on but extinguished stogie under a bush at the edge of his Coxsackie house. Don’t know if Grandma knew that’s why that bush thrived, but I did. It was a huge hydrangea, and it bloomed outrageously well with big blue flowers.
Today there will be a huge military parade in Washington, DC to honor 250 years of America’s army, and coincidentally, the celebration of President Trump’s seventy-ninth birthday. While rain and protests seem to be occurring, I will watch, along with millions of others, as our nation honors our military. At a time when wars rage in Israel, and those who threaten to destroy this tiny nation and in Ukraine where aggression has proven the tenacity of Ukraine’s fighters, and where threats appear in our country with those who seek their viewpoints be heard, blemishing the nationalistic pride most Americans feel, I celebrate this Flag Day and Grandpa’s birthday because it’s a good thing to look at the positives in life and celebrate them.
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