Half Light

Christmas Eve found her standing under the arch of Soldiers Tower, waiting for the carillon to ring.  She’d hope to be under the tower with John, waiting for the bells, watching the snow fall.  It was the same hope she held each of the four years he’d been gone.  She watched the late winter dusting through the northern arch of the tower but could not feel the flakes on her hair, on her cheeks, the arches of the tower protecting her, the unseen bells overhead saving her from the elements. The snow hypnotized her, holding her stare with the beauty of their fall.  

She roused herself by stuffing her hands deeper in her pockets, shrugging and turning to the east wall, the “gate”  they called it, the one that held the etched names of the dead from the first world war.  The one to end all wars.  She wanted to go and place her hands on the cold names, run her hands over them, stick her numb fingers in them but the metal bollards, like four sentries, kept her from advancing. “If I wanted to,” she thought “I could easily step around the barrier and reach out for them.”  But she knew it was not the attraction to the names of the dead from the war to end all wars but rather the repulsion, the revulsion of the blank wall ahead of her, the west wall, waiting for the inscriptions of the new war dead.  The wall that could take John’s.

“Are you alright Miss?”  Barbara spun around.  “Are you looking for someone?” The old man stood with his back to the blank wall having entered from the north side of the tower, the frozen football field behind him in the falling snow.  His hands were stuffed inside tweed pockets, his cap wet with melting snow.  His shoulders were pulled up toward his ears. “He mustn’ like the snow,'' she thought. “Are you looking for someone?” he said again.   This time Barabra followed his eyes to the wall behind her, turning slightly toward the names.

“My son is there.”  She turned back to him.  “Third column from the right, sixth row, third down.  Terrance O’Donnell.  We called him Terry.”  She found his name quickly.  “ I come here every Christmas Eve.  My wife can’t stand it but I don’t know, it helps me”

“I’ve never seen you here before.”  Her voice shocked her and she feared that she had brought offence.  “I mean” she concentrated on her tone, “I mean I’ve been coming here for the last four years on this night.  We used to come here on our way home some nights.  Since he shipped out, I haven’t missed a Christmas Eve”  she stopped and then continued, “or a birthday or an anniversary or…”  Her voice trailed off into the archway and then out into the gathering snow.

“I suppose we just missed each other.”  The old man was looking directly at her.  “I’m sorry.  You are missing someone tonight.  It is a difficult thing.  I will leave you to him.”  Before he turned to go, he looked up into the tower, imagining the bells hanging in the carillon above and thought it was like they were waiting for someone too. She could see a spot on his chin that he’d missed shaving.  She followed his gaze up into the tower.  They stood like that long enough to make her neck stiff.    

“I suppose we are too early for them to ring.  I just couldn’t stay in my apartment any longer.” 

“Yes.  We’re both too early.  I left the house quite a while ago.  I wandered through the campus.  Tried to convince myself not to come this year.  It’s strange.  Ever year, I promise myself not to come back.  I should be getting better, I say to myself.  Move on I tell myself but…” he watched her walk behind him.  “But, here I am back again, even earlier than last year.” He turned round to see her framed by the waiting blank wall.  

She nodded, like she had made up her mind.  “I’m sorry for your loss.”  Her voice was firm, not as kind as she hoped.  “It must be very painful.” She was short with him.  She watched him root around in his pocket and pull out a handkerchief.  He wiped his nose.  He put the handkerchief back in his pocket and walked away from her  to the gate, turning back towards her when he reached the bollards at the opposite end of the archway. She looked at him.  She imagined his son’s name perched on his shoulder.  “I will leave you so you can have some time to yourself.  Merry Christmas.  She turned away from him, stepping out into the snow, feeling it melt on her cheeks. 

“When we lost Terry we lived in a half light.  Like the light leading to the solstice.” His voice echoed from the other end of the arch.

She turned back. He had moved back towards her and stood in the center of the archway. He was staring at the unseen, silent bells.  “I couldn’t live like that any more.  I couldn’t live waiting for a return. Waiting for word."  He heard her footsteps on the concrete floor of the tower and knew she was beside him.  “It’s like standing here waiting for the bells to ring but they never will. I imagine you understand what I am talking about.”  He looked at her, the shoulders of her coat covered in snow.  She heard him take a deep breath.  “Heat and light.”  He let the words linger in the archway of the tower.  “Warmth and beauty”.  He held out his hand in the half light of the tower.  She hesitated and then, she reached out and put her hand in his.  

They stood like that for a moment, waiting, hoping the bells would ring.  He felt the warmth of her hand in his, then the pull of her arm, guiding him through the arch, past the blank stone wall.  They walked like that, the snow falling heavily, past the frozen football field waiting for spring, the flickering lights of the city to the north, and after a time, the sound of the bells bringing beauty and warmth and calling the light to return.

Unfurling Flags

In another life time, I stopped a young man in the hall of a school because he had a badge sewn on his backpack that was a depiction of a cross in a circle with a line through it.  Being a Catholic school I figured the young man was taking a stance against Christianity and stopped him to ask him about it.  He pulled out of that back pack an essay defending the symbol, taken from a band called Bad Religion.  He explained to me that he was not against "Christianity" but all religion.  I  admired his attempt at defending such a bad use of symbol but if you are going to protest all religion, you better find a symbol that encapsulates them all. 

This, of course, brings us to Britney Spears.

You may remember Ms. Spears performed at the MTV music awards in 2001 as a 19 year old in a loin cloth, with a yellow snake around her neck.  It may be possible that Ms. Spears did not know she was playing Eve, the temptress, the reason for our expulsion from the garden. We understood even if she did not. It is not an article of faith.  It's just that we, as a Western culture, have come to associate snakes with temptation.

Both our young man and Ms. Spears were run over by symbols.  One fails to see the meaning or significance of them and the other muddles meaning with an inexact use of them. Symbols are powerful things and when you play with them, you're playing with fire (see, I just did).  You don't get to change the meanings of symbols to suit your personal agenda or to sell more records. When it comes to symbols, you don't get to make up your own rules.

Now to our convoys.  

There is a small group of people using our flag as a symbol for their desire for freedom. Their definition of freedom does not match mine, or the majority for that matter but that is alright.  Reasonable people can disagree. The problem is the way they have used our symbol.  This is one of the things that has raised our ire, more ire than I think they counted on. They have used the flag as a cape, as car ornament and in some cases, as a towel to cover themselves as they get out of a hot tub. They've sewn it together with American flags, decorated it with swastikas, trying to warp it into a symbol of their movement. 

Ultimately they are using the flag as a cover to hide imprecise thinking.  The flag, coupled with a shout of "freedom" looks like thought and freedom of speech but (as Northrop Frye would say) it is nothing more than a bark of a dog. We want them to stop. Perhaps yell at them or  give them the finger but at the same time we don't want to dishonor the flag that they are dishonoring. If  we give the finger, are we giving it to veterans? To Terry Fox? To new citizens who have come to embrace it?  In that moment of struggle, that moment of hesitancy, they zoom by, perhaps feeling that they have our support.  

They do not. 

A flag, our flag, is a symbol for all of us.  We place our collective ideas about country in it and it is big enough to hold many and sometimes opposing ideas within it.  But it can't be used as a bath mat or car wrap.  When you do that, you are not making the political statement you think you are making. You are co-opting our symbol to defend an idea you cannot defend with reason.

The good news is that the majority of people know how symbols work and the power they hold. The better news is that a poorly constructed argument, a poorly thought out premise will disappear in a strong breeze, the same breeze that will unfurl a flag.