A Blues on the Fourth of July

It’s not a simple holiday. I don’t know how to tell my six year old while we sit outside of the Lunds in Eagan, up later than she’s ever been, what that complexity is. We are a country worth celebrating. I am a patriot. But, the capital P patriots who have staked out the word at best want stasis, at worst want backtracking. Many leaders of the Republican party, including Trump, have perversely made the present so bad that I now too want to make America great again.

Holidays invite you to remember that holiday from years past. I don’t remember much about the fourth from my early childhood. I more remember high school and early college, driving up to the West Side of St. Paul to park with Kevin and Meghan and get a good look at the 1st National Bank building, and see the fireworks. It wasn’t a simple holiday then, but my logic for America was haltingly simple: we were getting better, in fits and starts, but the arc of the moral universe. . .the bend. . . .the changes. . .the improving statistics. The steady march of humanity towards an honest, deep and abiding equality. An agreement to atone for sins, distant and in the present moment that were unforgivable. And fireworks ever year while we work toward that more perfect union.

People are quick to say Donald Trump is the worst President of all time. Not so fast. Andrew Johnson. Worth reading about. Dismantled so much progress, so much reconstruction. He’s in the running. George W. Bush is in the running too. You’ve got people in your life who aren’t here anymore, dead, from a war Bush started under false pretenses. My friend back in Massachusetts, her man has a big ass astronaut looking boot on his right leg for life because of Bush. For life. From a landmine. If he’s driving to Albany to see a concert, big ass boot. Kids got a soccer game, daddy’s in that boot. First dance at that kid’s wedding. Boot. And that is a drop in the bucket compared to what our brothers and sisters in Iraq and Afghanistan have, families, whole towns, gone, dead. On Bush’s watch and for what? For what? Here’s a grievance for me with Trump. I find many of Trump’s actions to be inarguably racist. Claiming you don’t want a Mexican judge on your case, calling a set of countries with primarily Black residents shithole countries. These are racist actions. Growing up, the Republican Party wasn’t lead by an out and out racist during my lifetime. Not on this level. Maybe if I understand Reagan more intimately I’d put him there, but he always seemed to me to be elusive with his evil. That doesn’t make it better, but it makes it less indelible.

Throughout my life, I thought the racists were the sideshow, the racists were the distraction, the racists were ultimately reprimanded. But I sit here, daughter on my lap, Midwest imperfection, 4th of July. 9:12pm, grass by the Lunds. One family tossing the Nerf football, one family in a vigorous and multifaceted game of tag. Everyone else waiting for the fireworks, talking, playing on their phone. My grassy neighbors: I know there’s plenty we have in common but I know there is shit we differ about severely. . .things we differ about on an existential level. I don’t presume camaraderie, I don’t know which weay the moral arc is bending anymore. I don’t know which way my neighbors are rooting for it to bend. Cause it’s bending a lot, and it’s not exclusively bending towards justice.

I’m sending her into a worse world. I’m sending her into a world with worst prospects for the environment, worst chances for wrongs to be righted, for my daughters to get a sound education and do something that matters to them and the universe. I want them to beat those odds, but I wish she didn’t have to beat the odds to exist. They start the tester fireworks, I remember seeing the fireworks at Disney World when I was a kid. It wasn’t the Fourth of July. But humor me. It was magical, I had my whole life ahead of me, lights splashing, loving my family, feeling good about life. Thinking that things were just getting better. I was young, Disney World was amazing, the fireworks were amazing.

Now it’s 20 plus years later. My legs hurt. My legs hurt when my daughter bumps into them. They hurt cause the veins aren’t all good. Every time they hurt I think about what I could’ve done in my life to not have my legs be hurting at 42 years old. But they hurt. They don’t hurt all the time. I tell my daughter that we are completing some circle, that I remember going to some place to sit outside with my parents to watch the fireworks on the 4th of July. I am lying, I don’t really remember that. I remember driving past a bridge as a kid with fireworks, but I remember thinking “I don’t think my family would do that”. My daughter asks me to tell her the story of my mom dying because she “loves that story”. I tell the story about my mom dying in the way a six year old might understand. She needed new knees, she rested for awhile after she got her new knees, she stood up, all the blood went to her chest, she died. My legs hurt. I think how much my mother’s legs must’ve hurt for those thirty minutes before the blood killed her. I cry. My daughter sees my cry. She tells me that Oma, the affectionate German term for my dad’s new wife, is “just as good”. My daughter doesn’t know it’s vicious to say that, and it’s not vicious to her, just hard for me to digest. My daughter her loves her Oma and her Oma is all she’ll know. I cry more. What does my daughter know? What do I know? I know my legs hurt. I know that our country is not at a crossroads. There’s a moment we didn’t meet. There’s a crossroads that we elected to ignore, going to down some path of split differences and false promises. I remember seeing all those Minneapolis City Council people in front of the 5 foot tall letters spelling out “DEFUND POLICE” and I remember thinking, “fuck it’s happening”. I didn’t think it was purely good, I certainly didn’t think it was purely bad. But I thought it was happening and I thought it was necessary. Did you see how big those letters were? It must be happening. Why was massive change a fever dream when massive problems were far from a dream? Where do the “Black Lives Matter” signs that used to be up on my neighbors yards sit? What does it really matter that I still have mine out? My wife still has mulch out from three years ago. Are we down or do we just not take shit down? And what are we down with? What is the goal now? Cancel student debt. Redistribute wealth. Put MPD under a consent decree. Reparations. My neighbors tonight, as we await this ritual, are they worried? Do they think it’s worse for their kids? Do they remember it differently? Did Lisa and Sam on the blanket think they were gonna defund the police? Do they believe the trajectory of the world is heading the wrong way? Or do they love fireworks, are they happy to talk their kids through the finer points. My legs hurt and I’m not gonna get the care I need. When I told the doctor that my left leg had hurt in one spot on and off for ten years he told me the right one looked bad, that was the one insurance would pay for. They fixed the leg that never hurts. I won’t get the care I need partially because I’ll get the care all fat people get which is the care you need tucked inside a big “fuck you fatty” sandwich they serve up at the beginning and end of every visit. Do any of my neighbors legs hurt? Any of them get charged for a colonoscopy they thought would be covered? “Lisa, are you worried we won’t get too many more 4th of Julys like this? Do you remember checking smoke conditions in your yesteryear summers?”

I had some working years on 4ths of July. I ran high school music summer camps at McNally Smith. Final concert almost always on July 2 or 3. Most of the kids gone quick. But one kid is getting the flight on July 4. And sometimes that flight isn’t until maybe 2. And you get the kid there by who knows, 12:15 or 12:30. Get back to downtown St. Paul. The weather is so hot the streets are wavy with heat, you have to take the bus home, summer camps are over and you’re back to driving your own car. And even though Ted, the guy in charge of signing out the vans, could give two shits if I keep it on the 4th, I just want to be done with it, I’ll take the bus. Downtown St. Paul was on a real ghost town vibe everyday. That was magnified on the 4th of July. No one around, empty mainly. Maybe a drink at Amsterdam, but probably just waiting in that air-bending heat, thinking about getting home, wondering if the camp was good for the attendees. Happy Fourth. No fireworks, just lots of work to finish up that last day. And I think the moral arc is turning. Maybe the camps are part of the moral arc. We are offering good education. The camps were good.

Did my family owe me more or less adulthood in my childhood? Did they tell me too much about how fucked this world is or too little? Can I give my daughter the simple enthusiasm to love the fireworks, to wave a flag, to feel patriotic? Should I tell her how my feelings about patriotism are complicated not only by our past, but by our present actions? Should I wait til she’s the age that Ron DeSantis wants kids to be before they talk about race? Was it good I was treated like an adult when I was a child? Should I copy that, or is the best correction to bring in more of that parental figure energy?

I type these blues down. Cause I don’t know what we’re aiming at as a country, so I don’t know what we’re celebrating. I know my leg hurts. I know today hurts. But I know it’s something to stay up til 10:26pm and go home thinking about the colors you saw in the sky.