“Love it, or Leave it”

“America: Love it or Leave it” was what the faded sticker stuck to the front door of my grandparent’s house read.

As a kid, the only thing on my mind when I visited was catching crawdads in Blythes Creek. So, while I had a sense of what that faded sticker meant to those second-generation German immigrants, it wasn’t until witnessing the events of September 11th some twenty years later that I began to grasp its true meaning.

That was also around the time I started daily sessions with a popular therapist, Jack Daniels. He helped me deal with the stress of squeezing 80-hour work weeks between a lonely wife and Vitamin-Dad deficient children so we could pursue a modest lower-middle class Midwestern life in the America my grandpa fought for.

Today, another twenty years later, albeit they loved living in the greatest nation, my grandparents have both since left. Three of my own children are nearing the age I was on September 11. They never hunted for crawdads because ‘animals have rights too’, and two decades after this country declared war on terrorism in a unified voice, we’re divided over whether to wear a fucking mask or not.

Today my “therapy” sessions are less frequent and have less to do with helping a new husband and father cope, and have more to do with helping a heavy-hearted American deal with the reality that those who truly loved this country — enough to fight for it — seem to be the only ones who left.