We have a fun July 4th celebration in our little town. It’s a university town, and a somewhat affluent one at that, especially when compared with the surrounding communities. And so we attract a lot of visitors. There are games for kids, a fun, somewhat tongue-in-cheek dog show, a parade, lots of food stands, a crafts fair, and, in the evening, a surprisingly good fireworks display over one of the local lakes.
Our girls LOVED Sewanee Fourth of July when they were young. We would give them a bit of cash, help them meet up with friends, and then pretty much say goodbye to them for the day. It’s a small, safe, friendly town, and we never worried about them. They always found us eventually, sunburned and sweaty, their faces covered in face-paint, their pockets stuffed with candy that was thrown to kids by the parade participants. We’d go home, have a nap and some dinner, not that any of us was very hungry, and then, after covering ourselves with bug spray, would make our way to the fireworks venue.
Fond memories.
Nancy and I have been doing July 4th on our own for many years now, since we became empty-nesters. It’s easier in a way, though a bit less fun. The magic of the day has dissipated with the years. We still enjoy seeing people, and we can usually find something good to eat. These days, we tend to stop by a couple of the parties that take place along the parade route, and, once the parade is done, we head home. Some years we go to see the fireworks, some years we don’t.
I will admit that this year my heart isn’t in it. Not the way it used to be. Part of that is personal — those fond memories have thorns these days.
But more than that, I feel less inclined to celebrate America than I used to. I have long found the equating of conservatism with patriotism offensive. I was brought up by liberals, and I raised my kids as a committed progressive. The terminology changed, but the love of country has never wavered. I have a Ph.D. in U.S. history, and while it is impossible to dive into the depths of our nation’s past without seeing its many flaws, it is also impossible to do so without gaining a healthy appreciation for qualities in our national story that are worthy of admiration. Resolve and resilience, boundless ambition and a commitment to human dignity that is often myopic and even hypocritical but also naïvely sincere. Ours is an imperfect but charmingly idealistic vision of government, an experiment in democratic republicanism that has yet to fulfill the dreams of its Founders, but which continues to strive for realization.
All of which makes our current state of political affairs so terrifying. The aforementioned experiment is at risk. If the Presidential election were held today, we would likely elect a man who has shown no compunction at all about placing his personal hunger for power above the national good, a man who has shown utter disregard for the centuries-old norms of our governing system, a man who has been convicted of 34 felonies and accused of dozens more, a man who literally lies about everything, who has made grievance and greed and graft synonymous with his personal brand, and who has declared without shame that he intends to begin his next term in the White House — a sequel to his disastrous, chaotic, hate-filled first term — with a one-day dictatorship. As if this paragon of gluttony will be able to stop after a single day.
Is our incumbent old? Yes. Do his communications skills leave much to be desired? Absolutely. This is why your Democratic friends and neighbors haven’t slept or eaten in days and have the look of caffeine addicts whose coffee machine is on the fritz. But Joseph Biden has been a remarkably effective President when it comes to passing bipartisan legislation. He has overseen an economic recovery that includes the creation of fifteen million new jobs. To be sure, inflation went up on his watch, spurred by supply-chain disruptions that began during the Covid recession of 2020 and worldwide economic dislocations caused by the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. But it has come down steadily since its 2022 peak and is now below 3% annually.
Most of all, though, the President is a decent, honest man, who honors and upholds our nation’s political ideals. He poses no threat to our republic. On the contrary, he is committed to saving our heating planet, improving the lives of those who face discrimination and economic injustice, and restoring a national right to women’s health care access. He has spent his life fighting for social equality. Is he a step slower now? A bit more muddled in his speech? A bit more frail and forgetful? Yes, yes, and yes. But on his worst day, he is better than the lying felon running against him.
I hope desperately that the American people will realize this before it’s too late. I fear they won’t.
I hope your July Fourth is fun and fulfilling.
We had lived together for two years before our wedding, and we were both in our late twenties. We had known almost from the day we started dating that we would spend the rest of our lives together, and by the time that weekend rolled around, we felt ready for the responsibilities and challenges of marriage. And we were. And still, we had no idea.
The clichés are true. Of course marriage is about love, about passion, and — even more — about friendship. But it is also about compromise, about joining two lives and finding the balance necessary to make certain that each of those lives feels complete and fulfilling, even as together we build a third life that belongs to both of us. It is a complicated undertaking. And while love and passion are great, there are times when they feel elusive. The kids are sick and you both have work deadlines and the shopping needs to get done. Or one job is more demanding than usual and it’s all you both can do just to get one kid to soccer practice and the other to ballet while also taking care of dinner and arranging the babysitter for the Friday event in town. Work, balance, compromise, sacrifice — sometimes, it feels like that’s all there is. Those early days of the romance, when everything was laughter and love and sex and adventure, seem so very, very distant.
2. Have faith. I’m not talking about religious faith here (though if that’s your thing, great). I mean faith in each other and in what you share. That belief in the fundamental power of our bond has gotten us past some really hard times. The love might not always be palpable, but we KNOW it’s there, and that certainty gets us through.
It has now been nearly five months since we lost Alex. I still get the same question — and to be clear, I don’t mind being asked. Not at all. It’s just that I still don’t know how to answer. My friends tell me that five months is nothing, that there is no reason I should have a handle on my emotions already. My therapist says the same. I suppose I should listen to all of them. But I grow impatient with myself. I make my living with words and with emotions. The core of my art is conveying the emotional state of my point of view characters. It’s practically the definition of what a fiction writer does.
My mother would be 102 years old today, which speaks to a) how very old I am, and b) how uncommonly old she was when she and my father had me. I was born at the end of the Baby Boom, when most couples in their early-forties were done having children. Mom always worried that she would be too old to be a good mother to me, whatever that might have meant. She shouldn’t have worried. She was a wonderful mother — caring, involved, just intrusive enough to make me feel loved without being so intrusive that I felt smothered.
Within moments, I was gliding over lush rain forest, surrounded by a ghostly mist, utterly alone, and, it seemed, in a cocoon of sensation — birds called from the green below me, the air was redolent with the sweet scents of rain and earth and forest decay, mist cooled my face, the green of the damp foliage was so brilliant as to appear unreal. Time fell away. Yes, I was moving. But to this day, I couldn’t tell you how long it took me to float through that segment of the course. It could have been mere seconds. It could have been hours. It didn’t matter. For the purposes of that experience, time meant nothing to me. I had escaped the tyranny of clocks and calendars.
Today is the 22nd of January. It’s been exactly three months since our older daughter passed away.
As I say, if you know me, you probably don’t find this surprising. I have spoken and written about my love of the Grateful Dead, my experiences shivering outside on cold nights, in the dark of Providence, Rhode Island winters, waiting at the Providence Civic Center for Dead tickets to go on sale. People don’t do that unless they have already done damage to their prefrontal cortex. I could tell additional stories. It is possible that I (and select others) was (were) high during at least one musical performance that we gave while in college. I might remember playing Cat Stevens’s hit “Wild World” and literally watching my digital dexterity degrade over the course of the song.
At this point, the celebrations of her life are over. Guests from out of town have left. Erin has gone back home. Nancy is starting to work again, and I am gearing up to do the same. We are, I suppose, stepping back into “normal” life. Except there is nothing normal about it, and in ways that truly matter, in ways that will remain with us for the rest of our lives, it will never really be normal at all, ever again.
The numbness, though — that bothers me. I want to feel. I want to weep for my child or laugh at a golden memory. I want to feel pain and love and loss and connection, because those keep my vision of Alex fresh and present. Numbness threatens oblivion. Numbness makes the loss seem complete, irretrievable — and that I don’t want. Not ever. Better to cry every day for the rest of my life than lose my hold on these emotions.