Where the flags are

waving the flag of Israel

“ …. and the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air ….” 

Unlike the red glare of Britain’s Royal Navy rockets arcing over Forty McHenry in the War of 1812, the fiery glare this time was from thousands of missiles launched towards Israeli cities by Hamas. Likewise, the flag defiantly flying throughout the current barrage was not our Stars & Stripes, it had only a single star and two blue stripes on a sea of pure white. Israel was under attack. The assault inspired throngs of Bostonians to assemble en masse in solidarity at City Hall Plaza. As hard as it may be to believe, my four year old granddaughter Sylvie, wise well beyond her years, wanted to be there too.  

The backstory: 
At a tender age of ten months Sylvie had already established a connection with Israel during a memorable family trip. She still loves to look at photos from that journey. Although she  "wanted to be there too", attending the rally with a start time of 5:30 PM presented a practical logistics problem, i.e., traveling to downtown Boston from outside the city during rush hour then returning home afterward early enough to avoid really Big Time disruption to her four-year-old’s nightly routines. It would be challenging ... perhaps too challenging. So, despite the imperative and a perfect alignment of head and heart, after assessing the prospects my daughter decided to nix the plan to bring Sylvie to the rally.

Then something happened...

On rally-day morning, while Sylvie and I were pushing her little brother’s stroller trying to get him asleep, I outlined a rally day alternate Plan B for her afternoon. For any non-rally day, Plan B would be perfect, but after barely a moment’s reflection she uttered these transformative words, “But I’m sad, I wanted to go where the flags are.” 
With that, Plan B instantly became history!

So, later that afternoon the family gathered and started trekking - first by car, then by foot, then by Red Line, and again by foot. Soon we were among three thousand like minded citizens at City Center all expressing rousing support for Israel in its frontline battle against a vicious terrorist foe. 

In the end, I know we did the right thing, proving once again, If there is a will, there is a way.

(Click to read more of David's previous photo-blog posts)