Patriotism: Are we passing it along?

There is much about Winslow that brings to mind the Fourth of July holidays of my childhood—things that are definitely missing from my high desert home. There are front porches decorated with red, white and blue banners, flags tipped towards freshly swept sidewalks, lawnmowers purring busily.

And that, of course, is just the lead in.

But not many of the kids I knew saw this as a patriotic event, a fact made real to my older brother and I. Our father spent most every Fourth of July in some foreign country, at least five of them in Vietnam. While most of my cousins saw this day as a family reunion celebration, to us it was a time to watch complete families come together to light the charcoal grill—a smell we only seemed to enjoy on Memorial and Independence Days. Watching mothers and fathers together was rather bittersweet for us.

But who could be miserable when the icing on the cake for everyone was the fireworks displays—an event we only attended when father was overseas.

Invariably we would spend those holidays with my maternal grandmother, who would end the day by bustling us into her Malibu Supersport for the drive to her favorite parking area. From driveway to where we parked took half an hour, even though it was only about a mile away. So she was careful.

Even with our knowledge of war, Independence Day was an innocent pleasure.

As a child, one can be naïve of the political news that seems to divide countrymen. I did not understand political parties (and to be honest, I’m still not quite sure what makes a Democrat different than a Republican—I’m sure there are many out there who would be happy to give me a lesson on that) or the separation of state and religion. To me, that is some kind of state-mandated schizophrenia.

I admit it— my vision of the Fourth of July would fit in the script for a Countrytime Lemonade commercial, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Now, having raised children, and still in the process of raising one, my latest stay in Winslow has caused me to question—what have I given to my own children in the way of understanding Independence Day?

I now live in a day and age when everyone is cynical of political figures and processes. I live in a place where I have no grass to mow, no grill to light—and where I am just too tired to consider the hour-long drive it would take to go to a fireworks display. Somehow, I feel I have let my children down.

As we approach another Independence Day, the news is full of the trial of Saddam Hussein. If I can believe our elected officials, this event is significant in the independence of yet another county. Maybe it’s because we don’t get television where I live, therefore I don’t see the evening news anymore, but somehow, this war seems so much more distant than Vietnam.

I listen to NPR on the car radio as I drive to and from Winslow and I hear a lot about the situation in Iraq. It occurs to me that here in America, we are so much more fortunate than the citizens of other countries that suffer terrorist strikes, bombs, gunfire and war.

I have heard some of my friends who live in big cities describe their gang activity there as a war zone. But members of our Armed Services might find that statement not only naïve, but a little insulting.

When the Trade Towers came down on September 11, 2001, it gave people all across our country a very real idea of what it must be like to live in a war zone. This was the first time in my memory that such a large number of Americans lost their lives in what I can only consider an act of war.

This action has definitely changed the way all Americans live today, but again, I cannot believe even this horrific act comes anywhere close to what it must feel like to live in war-torn countries in several parts of the world.

But, for a period of time, Americans learned what it is like to wake up, wondering if something big would fall from the sky, taking hundreds of lives with it.

Earlier, I said that when one is a child, it is easy to be unaware of politics and war. I should amend that statement to read that in America it is easy. This is certainly not true for many children in this world—children who have never known what an Independence Day celebration can be like.

If I would pass anything on to my children about Independence Day, I would say that even where it seems that there is not liberty and justice for all in this country all the time, at least there is the possibility. We are blessed to live in a country where a July weekend can seem like an episode straight out of the Andy Griffith Show.

For that I am grateful. I hope that I have taught my kids to be grateful, too.

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