american mysteries

As much as I'm not the most patriotic person alive, I love the fourth of July. It amazes me that, year after year, entire sleepy towns wake up to parades and fireworks and cookouts and general jubilation at being in and of this country, at the fact that, over three hundred years ago, men whose names they can't remember liberated us from a government whose faults they can't quite name. Mild sarcasm aside, it's really spectacular. A city full of golf carts comes alive this one day a year for this one parade.

Anyway, Robby and Savi and parents and I had fun at the parade. And then Savi and I paddled our kayaks out to the middle of Lake Peachtree for the fireworks. It's pretty neat to be right in the lake, to hear the blast ricochet off the trees before it gets to us. And, of course, to dip our toes in the water. Nothing, after all, is quite so American as a good, old-fashioned, wastefully expensive display of pyrotechnics.

All in all, a good Fourth (well, third, but a good party today too). I know that I'll quite probably be back in the country by this time next year, but it doesn't feel like it. I'll miss crazy American celebrations that arise from nothing more than the fact that we're American.