Happy Birthday

You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism. ~Erma Bombeck

Sunday, we had our patriotic celebration at church. We pulled out all the songs we only sing once a year: "God Bless America", "My Country, Tis of Thee", and "America the Beautiful". We didn't sing the national anthem, and that surprised me, but it's so difficult that most of us would have had to have squeaked and shrilled through it, so it's probably just as well.

Sunday night, we had fireworks, prayer, and an ice cream social, and as I was sitting there watching men I've known my whole life acting like little boys with the fireworks, I was overwhelmed with love for my country. It wasn't that fireworks were the best I've seen. They certainly weren't comparable to the big displays in large cities, or even the city festival shows I saw all over Japan. It was that unity that we all felt sitting in aging folding chairs on the cracked asphalt of our defunct tennis court. There were four generations of people sitting together, locked in innocent fascination at the colored lights in the sky.

One of my friends from abroad was talking about the Fourth celebrations. He said there was nothing like that in his country. People didn't get together in a big celebration for their country the way we do here. He commented on the fact that the pride his country was currently displaying over the World Cup would fade, and then nobody would want to wear anything with their flag again.

After our conversation ended, I started thinking about how I as an American feel about my country. When I was little, it was simple. I loved my country. Everything was idyllic, red-white-and-blue perfection. It wasn't until college that I started to realize that other people didn't necessarily feel the same.

When I went abroad, I experienced out-and-out hostility because of my nationality for the first time. Too many people had an assumption of who I was, what I liked, and how I was going to behave because I came from the States. The expectations, by the way, were generally not flattering. I was expected to be the epitome of imperial arrogance. When I didn't live up to those expectations, one of two reactions happened: I was asked if I was Canadian or the hatred continued unabated. I had old women move away from me on the train, war protesters single me out as I was walking through the center of campus, and mothers grab their children who were too near the scary foreigner.

I have to admit that this was a time of deep soul-searching for me about my feelings for my country. I had never realized how other people perceived us. I also saw some of my countrymen fulfilling every negative stereotype, and I remember wanting to make a big sign that said things like, "The creepy perv hitting on the high school student isn't your average American, I swear." My own feelings about things our leaders were doing became deeply mixed as I watched the beginnings of Afghanistan and Iraq through the lenses of foreign media and opinion.

I also felt angry quite frequently. I got mad every time I was in a meeting or on a trip and I saw that darned Canadian flag on somebody. Actually, it wasn't the flag that was enraging. It was the fact that I kept hearing them say, and in situations in which NOBODY asked them, things like, "Oh, well, you know, we're NOT Americans. We're Canadian, aye? NOT nasty Americans. See the flag, aye?" I just wanted to walk over, tear the offending patch off, stomp it, and walk away.

Because I was American, people felt comfortable saying the most abominable things about my country to me. I suppose they felt like we deserve it. I was in Japan during 9/11. I watched it happen on TV in the middle of the night, and the other US profs and I were in a state of shock just like everybody else during that horrible time. An Irish professor from the upstairs department caught one of my coworkers to express her sympathies, but immediately afterwards, she said, "But you know, you really brought it on yourselves with your foreign policy." My coworker was too shocked to say anything in return. She just stood there with her mouth open and the other woman walked away.

Even though going through this period was difficult for me, I think it was extremely valuable, too. It made me examine my thoughts about my country and pass from a blind allegiance to a thinking admiration. No matter how much Europe gets mad at us, no matter what stupid crap the so-called leaders of our nation put forth, I still believe in America. I still believe that the vast majority of us are dreamers, and that we want not only what's best for us, but that we truly have good will toward the rest of the world as well.

I believe that we are unique. Not better, not worse, but unique. Because of our past, because of the incredible mix of nations and languages and peoples, we are something wonderful and experimental. I worry about us, too, because as with all experiments, we're fragile, too. The slightest change in temperature, the slightest fraying of our Constitution, and I'm afraid the experiment will fail.

Today is a day for thinking about our country. Today is day to be grateful for what we have. Today is a day for sitting with our friends, family, and neighbors, and staring up at fireworks bought from a decomissioned school bus or a colorfully-striped circus ten. Today is a day to renew our commitment to sustain the experiment that sustains us. Today is a day to shake out the flags and hang them with pride, no matter what others may. Happy 230th Birthday America. May you always be the land of the free and the home of the brave.