Ever since my son was little, the two of us have put up the national flag every 8 September. Our building doesn’t have a flagpole, so we hang it from the open window in the entrance hall, where it can be seen on the façade. Every 8 September, we have our own little ritual involving a bit of improvisation. We slip a rolling pin into one end of the flag. Then we tie the rolling pin to the stair railing using the lanyards from my old press badges. Those are the lanyards that held the badges bearing my photo and name from various journalistic accreditations.

The lanyards happen to be just right for the job. And it’s somehow fitting that they should be those particular ones – the badge from the London Conference on the Former Yugoslavia in 1992, the European Community Summit in Edinburgh in 1992, the Council of Europe, Strasbourg 1995, the CSCE, Lisbon 1995, the UN General Assembly, New York 1995, the EU Thessaloniki Summit in 2013, the NATO Summit, Washington 2024…

That elaborate operation of tying knots around a rolling pin is made possible because I was there as a journalist. I was reporting on a country that was only just learning to stand on its own as an independent state.

It’s a rare privilege to live through the creation and maturing of your own country. And as a journalist, I think I’ve been blessed not only to have witnessed and chronicled some historic events, but to have taken part in them too.

And that means a great deal to me.

In my father’s home, they spoke Aromanian and Macedonian. In my mother’s – Macedonian. But when they were children, both were educated in languages that weren’t their mother tongue.

I went to school in Macedonian.

I write in Macedonian.

My children were born and raised in an independent Macedonian state.

I know our country isn’t perfect. I’m often disappointed. I often get angry with those who run it.

But in our anger, we sometimes forget that the country isn’t its politicians. Especially not those who always find excuses for their own failures and, more often than not, blame us, the citizens. As though we owe them gratitude simply for doing the jobs we pay them to do.

We are the country.

So, at least on 8 September, let’s allow ourselves to be happy that we have a country of our own. It’s not quite the one we imagined, but it’s ours. With its own place on the map of the world. All of us have kept it going – those who stayed and those who left, but still say “home” when they mean Macedonia. And that’s something we should congratulate ourselves on.

No one in our home rolls out pastry for pies any more. But the rolling pin still has a state function.

The flag is hanging from it once again, tied with the lanyards from my old press accreditations, each of them carrying an interesting story written into the history of Macedonian statehood.

Happy Independence Day to us all. May we celebrate it for many years to come.

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski