Every month at my kids' elementary school they have a Red, White & Blue Day assembly. They were started in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which claimed two lives in town, but civics has always been a strong focus of the school's curriculum.

Each Red, White & Blue Day assembly has a theme--the military's role for Veteran's Day, civil rights for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, the history of America's flag and the writing of the national anthem for Flag Day this past week. The lessons are simplified, as I suppose they must be for an audience that spans kindergarten to fourth grade, but never jingoistic. And at almost every assembly they sing "America Tears" and I cry.

If you are not familiar with the song, it was written by Teresa Jennings in 2002 and made into a single by Kristi Moore, a Florida singer. She donates the profits from the sale of her recording to the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, a group that helps the families and survivors of these military personnel. If you are familiar with the song, then you know it's one of those big "American Idol"-style melodies that carries you along with lyrics about heroes and patriots. But the line that always gets me is this one: "I will always be an American, and I'll always cry American tears."

My kids sing this song with gusto at every assembly, and I think that it is, in part, their enthusiastic embracing of their new country that makes the song so emotional for me. But being an American and crying American tears isn't so cut and dried when you started life on the other side of the planet.

While my kids are learning about American heroes and pioneers, I have to be making sure that they are learning about their counterparts in Russia. Many of the people who went to live in the Russian Far East, where my kids were born, were pioneers. They came to places like Vladivostok and Sakhalin looking for fortune they could not find in western Russia. Many were heroes, and by standing up for a different form of government or a different religion, they wound up exiled in the frigid, northernmost regions of the Pacific.

I hope my kids will continue to explore all the opportunities for patriotism as they grow. I think it will be an interesting journey.