Mar 31, 2023 4 min read

Some of my neighbors up here on Mt. Crumpit put pretty wreaths on their front doors, red heart-shaped ones in February and green shamrock ones in March. Now that Easter’s coming, the doors are festooned with pastel flowers. I like seeing the wreaths when Smoothie and I take our walks down to the dog yard.

I covet the decorations, and would like to hang a wreath on my door, but it would be swept away by a greedy gust. My front door looks out from the side of my house, facing a yard that separates me from the next row of condominiums. If I poke my head out the door and look to the left, I see a wide valley with the Pittsburgh skyline in the far distance. That view is one of the things that sold me on the place when I bought it last year at this time; but between the front door and the view it’s a wind tunnel.

I did not know that I would be moving to wuthering heights, where rain lands sideways and snowflakes swirl around even when it’s too warm for snow just a mile down the road.

At Christmas, a friend brought me a little blue and white flag with a dove on it. “Peace,” it said, and we poked its wooden stick far into the grass at the corner of the front porch. Some days when I sat working at my dining room table, I’d hear the flag flapping as the wind swooshed across the yard.

One windy day in January, the flapping sound stopped and I looked out to see the flag was gone, having been carried off on the wings of a squall. I looked around the my property and the neighborhood, hoping it had landed nearby, but it was gone.

My friend arrived with another gift to replace the flag, a metal wire bike with spinning wheels. Without the fabric sail of my flag, the bike would probably not be carried off.

Yes, the little bike survived last Saturday’s wind storm, the one that toppled trees and knocked out power all over. The squalls that blew the heavy iron top off my lamp post also set my little bike wheels a’spinning, but did not carry it away.

Looking to the left out my door, I noticed a plastic baggie had caught itself in a tangle of bare shrubs on the other side of my fence. As I reached across the fence to try to grab the baggie, I saw something blue and white lying against the bottom of a fence post.

My peace flag was back. The wind that had blown it away all those weeks ago had now carried it back to me. Its world tour had left it looking a bit raggedy and dirty, but whole.

A more poetic and eloquent writer than I might find some deeper meaning in that flag coming back – might take its unexpected return to mean that there’s hope in everything, and that we can never give up on peace. Something like that.

But maybe my flag’s return just means something more simple: that winds can change direction – even the really cold and destructive ones. I cleaned the flag with dish soap and set it out on the counter to dry. I thought about putting it back out in the yard, next to my little bike, but the wind would take it again.

I stuck the peace flag in the soil of my favorite house plant, safely inside where I can see it. And where the wind can’t touch it.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.