The Fourth of July

When I was young, I loved the Fourth of July. My uncle, aunt, and four cousins lived on Sunset Lake in what was a essentially a summer cabin, and, every summer, my parents parked the camper in their driveway and my mother and I settled in. My dad came up on weekends. Between my father, uncle, and grandfather, they scraped together enough money to buy an old wooden motorboat, which they docked beside the metal rowboat I would take into the swamp early in the morning. It was heaven.

The Fourth began the night before, with the bonfire in Kingston Commons.  Every year, they built a pyre out of old railroad ties, mounted a car on top, and set it on fire. As a small child, the sight of the flames reflected in the revolutionary era houses that line the common terrified me, but I came to love the event. There was a carnival, with rides and games, nearby, and, as we grew older, our parents would let us roam free, as long as we showed up at the bonfire spot on time. Nine, eight, and seven, we reveled in the independence.  We stayed up late to watch the car fall in a shower of sparks and cheers, then piled into my aunt’s station wagon for the ride home. The youngest fell asleep. My aunt and mother belted out popular tunes: “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “The Green Berets” were popular.

On the Fourth itself, we swam (nothing new there), begged my father to take the boat out and steer it in tight, fast circles so that we leapt the waves of the wake and screamed “Do it again!” over and over, and ate macaroni salad and grilled hotdogs for dinner.  The radio played tinny songs all afternoon—“In the summertime, when the weather is fine, we go swimming or go fishin all the time.” After dinner, we pulled rough sweatshirts over sunburned shoulders, and went back to the carnival for the fireworks.  Everyone sighed after each burst of color in the sky…a unified delight.

When I grew older, I read the Declaration of Independence to my mother as she made the potato salad, considered what I knew of history, and how many of the references I understood. Growing up in New England, I caught most of them and explained them to my mother, as a trapped audience.  My mother and aunt still sang together, although they preferred “I am Woman” and “United we stand, divided we fall, and if our backs should ever be against the wall, we will be together, you and I” with dramatic arm motions.

So I am dismayed, now, that I really dread the Fourth of July. It’s not that I understand more about our complex history and the slow, painful struggle that many have endured in their own search for freedom and independence in our country. It is not that I no longer believe in the words of the Declaration—I do.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” ring as true now – if you replace men with people-- as they did over 200 years ago. It is not that we are so fractured as a country that we no longer even sigh in unified wonder as each firework bursts overhead in a public display.

The Fourth of July has become one more reason to drink, bellow, light off more fireworks every year, turning our neighborhoods into “war zones” for hours, terrorizing dogs and vets with PTSD, along with the rest of the populace, in the name of patriotism. We have lost our reverence for our history, for the founding of the country we all claim to love, for our neighbors. Somehow, we have to bring that back.