Photo by Sebastian Bibb-Barrett.
July 4, 1976.
The Bicentennial. We passed Bicentennial quarters up and down our third grade lunch line. My mother celebrated her 37th birthday with a big party in the back yard. My Dad dragged a table out on to the deck and turned it into a bar. We kids ran wild while the adults drank and talked and played volleyball. Bob Vest sunk our sailboat in the lake. Or maybe I just imagine-remember that he did. The party is one of the few memories I have of my parents enjoying themselves, together.
July 4, 1977
Just days before my mother's 38th birthday, my great-grandma "D." passed away. That year the party had to be cancelled. We loaded into my Dad's Suburban for the long drive from Detroit to Iowa and divvied up the back seats into war "zones." The air in the farm church was still and hot. My great-aunt Jean told me that the black lace net covering the coffin was there to keep the flies off the body.
July 4, 1981
My Dad and new stepmother took us camping at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. I woke up in a cold pool after a night of heavy rain. Because my stepmother was too frugal to take our sleeping bags to the laundromat to put them in the dryer, we had to get back in them later that night. On the beach, watched a man nearly drown in the storm-heavy surf and then smoke a cigarette, first thing after his rescue. My Dad drove us back to Philadelphia drunk, bumper-tamping people in front of us in the end-of-holiday traffic. No one said, "Let me drive."
July 4, 1991
President George H.W. Bush brought the war machines to K Street for a victory parade celebrating the end of Operation Desert Storm. It was hot and crowded and we all felt trapped. My cousin's fussy toddler wouldn't let anyone hold her -- except a perfect stranger. We tried to pretend we didn't hear the woman quietly ask her daughter if she thought it was a sign of abuse. You can't say out loud, "Nah, the kid's just a total brat." Not in front of the kid's parents. The tanks sank into the hot asphalt and commuters cursed those ruts for years afterward. Everyone who was in DC that day remembers the fireworks as the best they've ever seen.
July 4, 2004 - 2007
These years are a blur of boats and barbecues and kids. I remember someone spending $1500 on fireworks. After I balked at the waste, I was categorically excluded from the fireworks budget negotiations. Each year I sat and watched the family shoot potatoes into the lake using a special gun made of PVC pipe powered by hairspray and a cigarette lighter. One of those years, I watched the adults shoot the potato gun one foot from a baby's head. One year, I really didn't feel well at all but did not yet know what was wrong with me.
July 4, 2008
There is a photo of me, taken on that day, holidng a baby I don't recognize in a room I don't ever remember being in. When I see the photo, it bothers me alot that I am unable to remember where I was or who I was with. Later, I work out that it must be Lucy, at the house we rented for the family reunion.
July 4, 2012
I drove from North Carolina to Miami. The second leg of a trip from DC that would bring me to Florida for six months to work. My white kitty shit himself one hour from our house. The mess was all over the inside of the carrier and the other cat. I stopped at a gas station in rural Virginia to buy baby wipes and paper towels."Are you having a problem?" the attendant asked. Later, when I told the story to my friends, I'd tell them I had replied, "Yeah I'm having a fucking problem!"
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