A FRENCH FOURTH

Charles Trueheart

1    Along about this time every year, as Independence Day approaches, I pull an old American flag out of a bottom drawer where it is folded away － folded in a square, I admit, not the regulation triangle. I’ve had it a long time and have always flown it outside on July 4. Here in Paris it hangs from a fourth-floor balcony visible from the street. I’ve never seen anyone look up, but in my mind’s eye an American tourist may notice it and smile, and a French passerby may be reminded of the date and the occasion that prompt its appearance. I hope so.

2    For my expatriated family, too, the flag is meaningful, in part because we don’t do anything else to celebrate the Fourth. People don’t have barbecues in Paris apartments, and most other Americans I know who have settled here suppress such outward signs of their heritage － or they go back home for the summer to refuel.

3    Our children think the flag-hanging is a cool thing, and I like it because it gives us a few moments of family Q&A about our citizenship. My wife and I have been away from the United States for nine years, and our children are eleven and nine, so American history is mostly something they have learned － or haven’t learned － from their parents. July 4 is one of the times when the American in me feels a twinge of unease about the great lacunae in our children’s understanding of who they are and is prompted to try to fill the gaps. It’s also a time, one among many, when my thoughts turn more generally to the costs and benefits of raising children in a foreign culture.