In case you were wondering about that flag on my porch

Every day until the end of her life, my wife flew a flag from our front porch, and she changed it often.

She was an avid gardener, so most of her flags were inspired by the season. Goldfinches and lilacs in April and May. Red cardinals and orange leaves in October. Turkeys and pumpkins in November.

Of course, sometimes she honored other things with her flags. Sundays during football season she flew a Bears flag. During July every other year she flew a soccer flag to honor the World Cups, both men’s and women’s.

When she died of stroke in 2018, I continued the tradition for a while, but it somehow didn’t feel right to me. After all, it had been her tradition, not mine, and once she was gone, I was pretty sure that I was always pulling the wrong flag out of the basket. Would the sunflower flag go up before or after the roses flag?

I could only imagine her slow shake of the head that said: “What could be more obvious, and why didn’t you pay attention?”

In time I gave up flying the perfect flag each day. But in their place, I now embrace my own flag tradition over a stretch of time that spans the entire month of June, the best month of the year.

Oh, you may have some other month that you think is best, a month that makes you feel most alive and most grateful for the privilege that is your life, but for me it’s June.

June, when we teachers stop spending endless hours with other people’s kids, and get to spend more time with our own.

June, when my kids thank me for fathering them into the world.

The June wedding anniversary my wife and I celebrated for 48 years.

My birthday in June — and my brother’s and sister’s birthdays.

I could go on, of course, in less personal but still important ways, like the first day of summer on the solstice. Or Flag Day. Or Juneteenth. There is so much to celebrate in June, if there is a more joyful month, I don’t know what it is.

Of course, with joyful events like birthdays, anniversaries and vacations falling then, maybe that is why June is the month I feel most grateful to be alive. It’s a month that makes me want to fly a flag to remind me of all the gifts I have had in my life.

And what single flag could possibly stand up to all of that celebration? The Stars and Stripes, of course.

But it’s important to begin and end my celebration of grateful flag-flying on just the right days. That’s why I raise Old Glory on Memorial Day in late May, and I keep it flying until Independence Day on July 4.

Memorial Day: a day to honor the brave men and women who gave their lives in service to the nation that makes my joyful June possible.

And Independence Day: a day to honor the brave men and women who initially brought it all about, by establishing what Lincoln later described as “a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Although I keep my flag flying for a bit more than a month, there are those who fly the flag every day—on their porch, on their car window, or even on their body with tattoos. And that’s fine.

And there are those who never fly the flag, and that’s fine, too. They don’t need to display a tangible symbol to show their love for their life and their land. A stick and a piece of cloth on the porch — or the absence of them — are no indication of what kind of American lives behind the door.

So I guess you might say that I steer the middle course between flying the flag always or never. For me, it’s that 40 or so days between Memorial Day and Independence Day, a span of time that embraces the best month of my life, and a span that begins and ends on days that honor men and women I never met who made that joyful life possible.

For me, I don’t want the flag to become a constant, daily fixture, a thing that might lose its value by becoming mundane. I want a month or so of special observation to remind me of my blessings. I fly it during my most grateful month of the year so I will see it every morning as I walk out to get the paper, and every afternoon to get the mail.

That month has just ended for this year. My Stars and Stripes has been down since Independence Day, last week. My porch feels a bit naked right now.

But taking down a flag after a designated period of time doesn’t mean that you are any less thankful for all the gifts it reminds you of year after year. Those who observe Lent or Hannukah might understand what I mean.

I know my wife would understand if she were here: loving the flag being taken down, and loving equally the ones yet to fly.

TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.

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