Thank you for your words. Happy 4th of July to you and your family. `mc
I am patriotic. Not righteously enough to satisfy conservative relatives, but I am patriotic enough to earn the derision of hipsters and those the age of my son. I grew up in small town America. We had celebrations and memorials for Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day, D-Day, Independence Day, you name it. We were taught about freedoms we should not take for granted. We shed a tear when they played the Star Spangled Banner because the idea of America was just such a beautiful one.
Every summer for the Fourth we would drive the hour or so out to my uncle’s farm. It is the farm where my dad and his siblings grew up. My aunt and uncle still live there. The country is beautiful. Northwestern Illinois, big rolling hills, near the Mississippi and other lesser rivers, plenty of eagles and limestone bluffs and a creek named Hell’s Branch for its hellish curves and habitual flooding of farmland and pasture.
My parents and all the aunts and uncles would pitch money in every year so my uncle could make a run to Missouri and pick up lots of big fireworks. The kind they use for town displays. We would play outside all day while the adults argued politics. We would try to catch turtles and fish in the creek, look for arrowheads and fossils up on the hill that used to be under an inland sea. We ran and hid in the cornfield only to go home with itchy scratches all over our arms and legs. It was almost as idyllic as it sounds, and definitely qualifies as a cliché to many these days.
In the evening we caught lightening bugs and then gathered on the deck and the natural limestone shelf out back. My uncle the firebug and funny car builder would go out to his station in the pasture and we did our job yelling oohs and aahs as he shot off $500-1000 dollars worth of explosives. My sister and I slept on the way home, tanned and tired and full of grilled meat and Aunt Louise’s fruit and marshmallow salad.
I still love America. I am lucky to have been born here, where girls aren’t drowned or thrown away, where girls are allowed to get an education. I have always had access to clean water, police and fire services, hospitals and electricity. I have never experienced an invasion or my own government’s army marching down my street.
There are a lot of things I don’t like about the U.S. these days. We have a loud contingent of intolerance. Our politics are not honest, if indeed they ever really were. We bully smaller nations, we pontificate, we are rude and poorly educated compared to many countries. Yet I was able to go to school as an adult and get a degree. Americans can be very generous, even while we are loud and ignorant. I think most of us are well meaning.
I am still patriotic. I am still happy to have been born in the U.S. I take voting seriously. I have had relatives fight in every war since one of them came over on the Mayflower. We farm the land, we serve our country, we speak out against wrongs, and we get involved. We are Americans. I’m an American. When I’m down at Wrigley Field to see the Cubs and the Star Spangled Banner plays, I put my hand on my heart and I still shed a tear at the beauty of the idea of America.