America: From Patriotism to Pain

Summer 2020, the Pandemic, and the Election

I’m eight years old, sitting between Mum and Dad on our living room couch. My brother Larry’s sitting in the matching chair opposite from us. We’re half-attentive, but interested, in the Super Bowl. The Buffalo Bills were about to play the New York Giants.

Whitney Houston came on screen, wearing a red, white, and blue windbreaker suit. She was surrounded by an entire orchestra. Then, military snare drums rustled, and were followed by a trumpet.

“Ohhhh…. say can you see? By the dawn’s early light…” She sang softly.

I felt goosebumps on my arms. They switched the camera view to show Whitney singing in front of a Marlboro cigarette ad, then to members of the military holding flags from each state. One flag had a Confederate flag within it, situated next to a state seal, which meant nothing to me at the time. They cut to a Black U.S. Marine saluting and looking solemn. Then Whitney turned up the volume.

”Annddd the rooooockets red glare! The bombs bursting in air! Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there!” she sang joyfully. I wiped a tear from my cheek.

“Oh say does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave!!! O’er the land of the freeeeeeeeeee and the home of the brave!!!” Whitney sang victoriously, lifting one arm like Lady Liberty, then both arms, followed by the whoosh of the flyover.

The game didn’t matter. Whitney Houston won the Super Bowl that year.

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“COVID hugs!!!” Dad exclaimed as I walked onto his sun porch. He stood six feet away, and crossed his arms over his chest, like the Wakanda Forever salute.

“COVID hugs!!!” I responded, wondering if I’d ever be able to embrace him again.

“Put your stuff down, stay a while!” he exclaimed, opening the slider door to the house he and my mother shared. I set my bag down in her old room, then came out and looked around. An electric candle stood on a chair next to a portrait of Mum and her ashes in the living room. The candle was the last thing she held before she went into cardiac arrest two and half years ago, while changing the battery after getting off the phone with a friend.

Dad had the news on, as usual. That day’s lead headline read, “Two Secret Service agents test positive for COVID-19 following President Trump’s rally in Tulsa.” Then they showed Trump’s official White House portrait. His lies about COVID-19 were now affecting his staff and campaign.

“What a cunt. I hope he gets COVID and dies,” I muttered before Dad walked into the living room with rolled-up salami and cheese to snack on.

“I hope to God he doesn’t win,” I said to Dad gravely.

Dad sat down and added a few crackers to his plate. “This election will be very interesting. You know, think of all the voters Trump’s losing because of how he responded to the COVID situation. He has the wrong approach and it’s costing him. It seems hopeful for Biden,” he said. Dad’s a Democrat and die-hard optimist, and I can’t tell him he’s being unrealistic because he’s lived through more Presidents than I have.

“I hate this country now. I’m embarrassed to be American,” I said.

Dad waved his right hand as if he were brushing something away. “These things are always in flux. Sometimes Republicans are in power, and sometimes Democrats are. It goes back and forth, like a pendulum. What matters most is what happens locally, since that can affect you the most. Trump will be out of there soon.”

“I hope so,” I said, looking over at a portrait of Mum smiling. She hated Trump since the 1980s. A week before she died, she emailed me to commend me on kindly calling out a Trump supporter on my social media page. “It made me so proud to be your mother,” she wrote. “Anyway, you may think I’m crazy, but I just admire the beautiful woman you are and I love your values and I am incredibly proud of you. Love, Mum.”

I miss you so much, but I’m glad you didn’t live to see this, I thought, looking back at her.

Dad and I went for a drive later that day. He turned on WBUR and we listened to “A Celtic Sojourn” with Brian O’Donovan together, a local program that featured Irish music. I watched the pines fly by as fiddles played joyfully. I wished my ancestors didn’t have to emigrate from Ireland due to tyranny because then I’d still live there.

We reached downtown Plymouth, Massachusetts, where the pilgrims allegedly landed until you found out they really landed in Provincetown. I expected downtown to be fairly empty. I was flummoxed when I witnessed a mob with almost no one wearing masks or practicing social distance.

“Do you want to go to The Lobster Hut?” Dad asked.

“No,” I said with bitterness. “Too many people without masks.”

I hated them all. I felt like they were trying to kill my elderly dad two years after my mum died. I felt like they were trying to kill my brother Larry, who lived in a group home with other men in sobriety. I felt like they were trying to kill me too, and I was starting to not care. I’d been through so much and was approaching the last straw. I already decided I’d kill myself if Donald Trump were re-elected.