The Country Drive-By

My mom has been 'flagged' again. It's a ritual that's been going on four years now and I think it's so touching and kind, but that it also says something amazing about the community in which she lives.

My Dad died four years ago this week, and every year or so, someone, someone with a ladder or a tractor or something tall, installs a brand-new Canadian flag on the pole at the entrance to our family farm. The flagpole isn't one of those jobbies with the rope that lets you lower or raise the flag; it's a fixed thing, pretty high up.

Replacing the aging flags had been my dad's job, and that first terrible year, we were preparing to call my brother to help with it when the new flag just... appeared one day. Each year now, just as the flag starts to look a titch shabby, someone replaces it. It happens when mom's away, and while it must take a bit of time to do, no one has ever told her who is responsible for the drive by.

The 'flagging' reminds me of a paper I read in my school days comparing and contrasting the rituals of different cultures when it comes to wedding gifts.

In the culture I inhabit, wedding gifts are a private matter between the giver and the recipent, delivered in wrapping paper or in an envelope to hide the gift from others' prying eyes. The exchange, and the relationship is only between the individual couple and the giver.

But in a prairie culture whose name escapes me now, I'm thinking Hutterite perhaps, the wedding gifts are always cash, and always very public. Everyone -except- the couple receiving the gift knows what's been given by whom. People come up to the bride as she and the groom dance, and clip or pin money to the back of her dress. The couple knows only the total, and their gratitude therefore flows to the entire community at large. The relationship is between the community and the couple. The gratitude from the newly married must flow to all, since there's no way to know who gave what, only the total. It's a very big difference from the individual, one-on-one relationship.

And that's the kind of thing that's going on in Clearview township. The community is looking after its own. There are likely a dozen or so people who probably know who's being so kind, but Mom doesn't know, so her gratitude necessarily flows to everyone. And, if the system works the way it ought to, she'll pay back the kindness, also anonymously to someone else in the community who could use some help. No one writes it down or keeps score, but it's a cool dynamic that keeps kindness going and I'm grateful for it, too.