The Birthday of Our Country
Have you ever been to a birthday party where all anyone talked about was when the guest of honor was an infant? “So big at 9 pounds 8 ounces.” “She never cried, such a good baby.” “Little round bald headed baby.” And there stands the 21-year-old who graduated college. The forty-year-old raising his own family now. The fifty-year-old surviving a bitter divorce. The sixty-year-old who looked up and realized there was more to life than her job. The seventy-year-old who’s grown grumpy. The eighty-year-old whose heart has mellowed into acceptance. “She came out wrinkled but smoothed up real fast.”
No one does that, no one. Why do we do it to on the birthday of our country?
The narrow focus on our founding—and not our life—is ultra-strange. We should be celebrating Lincoln as much as Jefferson. W. E. B. Du Bois and John Adams. Ida B. Wells with Thomas Payne. Albert Einstein with Thomas Edison. Ann Richards AND Betsy Ross. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and James Madison. When we don’t, we’re perhaps celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, as did the founders with sack races and pony rides and hotdog eating contests. But we’re not celebrating the birthday of our country.
Emma
Sadly, I did not go to watch fireworks. Too darn hot. And I’m just not in the mood to celebrate. Some of my friends decided to wear black armbands. On the positive side, I remember July 4th celebrations of my childhood. Always, my daddy’s bbq ribs, watermelons, potato salad and iced tea. And relatives. It was a time to gather and be joyful. As youngsters, my five siblings and myself anticipated the 4th much like Christmas. Most times we would plan a meetup at a creek or river and “go wading” as my mother always called it. Somehow back in the 1950’s they acquired “adult beverages” when Mississippi was a dry state, so there was that. Good times sweetly remembered.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Such nice memories, Emma. ❤️ (My mother used to drive across the Pearl River in Jackson to the “Gold Coast” in Rankin County to buy legal/illegal liquor. 🙂 )
Joe Hawes
Well.said, Ellen and very appropriate these days.Keep putting it out there.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
We had a wonderful sermon this morning in this little church in the NC mtns where we are right now. The priest tied the words in “America the Beautiful” about “God mend thy every flaw” to the truth about the history of our flawed–but beloved–country. It was really nice.