A Very Different 4th of July
No fireworks or parades for me this year. I just can't.
A Very Different 4th of July
No fireworks or parades for me this year. I just can’t.
It’s the night of the 4th of July. This is a holiday that I used to love celebrating, especially as a child. As a daughter of immigrants, my parents taught me such pride for this country, such gratitude for what she provides, such love for her. As a child, I would even entwine red, white, and blue crepe paper in the spokes of my bicycle and ride proudly around my neighborhood. We would go to parades and at night go to watch the fireworks with such awe and pride.
I have always felt that pride and love…until lately. Now I fear for this country and her very identity and all that she has stood for.
I can hear the fireworks, and I feel strangely detached from them. If anything, they remind me of bombs that can destroy a country, the bombs that my parents would describe from World War 2. How much destruction those bombs would cause (my mother lost one of her sisters to a bomb). The pain of liberty fought for was always very real for me, as a daughter of these brave immigrants.
And as a young adult, I fought to stay in this, my beloved country, when my parents wanted to move back home to their country of origin. They informed me that we would be moving, that I could go to college there in Italy, and that they were making plans for all of this to happen.
For the first time in my life, I said No. No, I wlll not move there. No, I wll not leave my beautiful America. No.
Because of my No, I was on my own, having to figure out how to support myself, how to stay in school, how to survive. Survive I did. I figured out how to work my way through college and earn a degree. Was it harder? Yes. Was it worth it? Yes.
And now, in my elder years, I feel as if this beloved sacred country that offered refuge to others, that tried to welcome all (imperfectly, to be sure), that stood for freedom of speech where you had the right to disagree and express your opinion….this is all being threatened. Immigrants, most of them not criminal, are being rounded up and deported, all the while being treated in an inhumane and cruel manner. Differences between us are defined as bad, people who disagree with us are defined as other, division is constantly created and fueled by our leaders. We are aimed at each other so that we do not see what is happening above us. People are called names, cruelty and being mean are becoming a norm for what to expect from those who are in positions of power. Seriously?
Freedom is being stripped away, quickly and brutally. Fear is being spread everywhere. Those whom we elected to represent us and to follow our Constitution are bowing to a would-be-king, out of fear of losing their jobs. The Supreme Court, who is supposed to be above all of this, is no longer supreme. To say that I feel disappointed does not even begin to describe the depth of the sorrow and betrayal that I feel.
The sound of the fireworks is unsettling to hear tonight. To me, it is the sound of a people being distracted by pomp and circumstance, by lies… this is what I hear. And it hurts deeply.
Friends call to wish me a happy 4th, and I cannot even bring myself to wish them the same. I let them know that I am not in a space to celebrate this year, that we are in deep trouble, that we need to pay attention to this, that these fireworks might as well be aimed at destroying our democracy. Is this what is being celebrated today?
At times today I felt like I could not even breathe. I felt pain in my chest and in my throat, the pain and heartbreak of betrayal and of things lost, destruction of values, and loss of ways of life taken for granted. My head hurts from trying to understand how this happened. I shed many tears, felt immobilized and unable to even speak with friends, letting them know by text or email what was going on inside me.
I did get the opportunity today to communicate with a soulful young man who is fighting for his country of Ukraine. His courage and conviction still resonate deep within me. He is putting his life on the line to fight for freedom from someone who wants to take over their country and take away their very identity. My heart breaks for this young man and his people. We connected for a moment in time, he and I, across the boundaries of country, gender, and even age, to hear each other and offer support. Here was this young man, offering support to me from the midst of a horrible war. There is much kindness in this world, and strength in that kindness, if we stand together.
Can we begin to do that more here? I miss that connection that I used to feel with all Americans. What happened? I think that many people were feeling left out, not heard, not taken care of, and they looked for someone to change things. I can understand this. We did and do need change, but not what is happening today. This is not change, this is the destruction of our country and what it has stood for. This is criminal.
Laws are being ignored. Power is being funneled toward one branch of the government, and not the three that are supposed to balance each other. How do we come back from this? Can we?
Now that I am older, I realize that coming back may take some time, more time, perhaps, that I may have left to live on this earth. I can’t let that stop me from doing what I can now.
So, I will get up tomorrow morning and continue making calls, contributing, protesting. I must. We must.
I, as an elder when I write about aging, have often written that I am not dead yet. And I like to believe that our democracy is not dead yet, although there are times that I am not sure about that. We cannot give up. We must keep fighting for all that we have stood for, for who we have been to the world, for who we have been to each other, for trying to do better and be better, for inclusion, welcome, and equality, for being woke (can we please reclaim that word) as in awakened to the suffering and needs of others and trying to help rather than destroy. America has been great, and I like to believe that we can get there again.
But, for right now, I am going to skip the fireworks. Instead, I will keep stoking the fire of righteous rage within me. I will be kind, I will set boundaries, and I will resist where and when needed.
It’s time to say No again.