Today is the Fourth of July, an important day in our nation’s history of course, and in my family’s history as well. My parents were married on this date in 1957, and it remained one of my mother’s favorite holidays, even after my parents divorced in 1969. Nearly every year we attended the Peoria Municipal Band Concert at the amphitheater in Glen Oak Park, just a few blocks from our house. My mother would be fully decked out in red, white and blue---in later years she even collected a patriotic vest, hat and shoes covered in sequins. When they played “The Stars and Stripes Forever” she handed out small flags to us and other nearby children and led a small parade around our picnic blanket. Even today when I hear that song, I smile---and cry a little, too, now that she’s gone.
I did very little to celebrate Independence Day, other than to indulge in the luxurious freedom of reading a book---a novel, not something I had to study or prepare a lecture from---for virtually the entire day. I took a little time off to use up some bananas that had been riper than I realized when I brought them to the cabin, so I was glad to have Fannie Farmer along for a banana bread recipe, and ran to Walmart to pick up a cover for the grill. Although there were several fireworks displays scheduled in nearby towns, some instinct kept me reading at the dining table after my beans-and-weenies supper. By the time darkness fell, it was pouring rain like the end of the world, and it’s still raining lightly as I write this at 10 p.m.
So that’s the freedom I celebrate and am grateful for tonight—the freedom to relax and do very little. I am grateful for the financial and social stability that allows me to spend a careless day alone in a small cabin without anxiety that I can’t afford a day without gainful employment, without fear of who might come knocking on the door. Is it any wonder that immigrants and refugees stream to our shores and borders? Centuries of men and women fought battles---military and political and intellectual---to secure such freedoms. To them, we owe our deepest gratitude.
So that’s the freedom I celebrate and am grateful for tonight—the freedom to relax and do very little. I am grateful for the financial and social stability that allows me to spend a careless day alone in a small cabin without anxiety that I can’t afford a day without gainful employment, without fear of who might come knocking on the door. Is it any wonder that immigrants and refugees stream to our shores and borders? Centuries of men and women fought battles---military and political and intellectual---to secure such freedoms. To them, we owe our deepest gratitude.
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