What I remember most about the bicentennial celebration in New York City was the sailors. As the tall ships from around the world paraded through New York Harbor, past the Statue of Liberty, and up the Hudson, I recall being hoisted up off a ladder onto a ship docked at the South Street Seaport on the East River. My friend accused me of being a flirt. Forty-five years later, I still swoon for a man in uniform.
It was inspirational and aspirational, that majestic display in 1976, the summer before I went to college, when I still believed that the world was mine for the taking. When getting caught up in a celebration of my country's 200th birthday meant little more to me than enjoying a sparkling summer day and a few winks from young deckhands as innocent and ill-prepared for what lay ahead as I was, starched white caps notwithstanding.
To the extent I ever thought about it back then, I was proud to be an American. I'm sure I even felt superior. Why wouldn't I? I took for granted the torch bearing lady rising out of the water off Manhattan's southern tip, the beacon of freedom who had welcomed my ancestors but who, to me, was just another New Yorker. As I got older, I realized what that must have meant to people sailing in from other places, where people like me could not have imagined the simple joy of just existing, without fear, on a July afternoon.
Fast forward, which is how everything seems to happen now that I am no longer sixteen, even though I could swear I just was. I watched some unofficial fireworks from my window the other night, as spectacular a display as I've ever seen though the Fourth of July was still days away. It is a fitting time for celebration, in some ways, as we emerge from the surreality of the pandemic. The Chicago lakefront is packed again, as are the bars and restaurants. Gone are the plexiglass barriers and the signs requiring masks, though I marvel at how so many have still refused to shed the face coverings. I, for one, am all in with the science, vaccinated and more than willing to expose myself to whatever germs humanity is spewing, because to live in fear of the air, to me, seems inconsistent with living. Pending variants and further notice, of course.
When it comes to celebrating America's birthday though, I proceed with caution. Notions of liberty have been twisted, and a frightening segment of the country has bought into what I and every right thinking person I know believes to be utter lunacy. Dangerous lunacy. We are at the mercy of forces of indecency and evil, and playing by the rules seems to render us powerless. The rationality of the center has given way to extremes on both ends, and to the most ruthless of the extremes go all the spoils. We are spiraling downward, and as much as I cling to hope, I tend to despair.
We are hovering at the edge of a precipice, and I pray for salvation. A young sailor in a starched white uniform to lift us up, an armada of tall ships to remind us of who we are supposed to be. An aspirational Fourth of July, perhaps, to bring us back.
