It’s funny that i don’t remember loving the 4th of July as a kid. Because it’s become one of my favorite holidays. And this may sound bad but it’s not really about America for me. Don’t get me wrong – i love America, i am grateful and proud to live here, grateful for my freedom and aware of it’s cost. But if i’m honest, that’s not what i think about when i watch the colors explode in the night. i think about wonder and i think about hope.
i’ve watched with our gang, all of us laughing in a van pushing through the black corn distance of Illinois. Last year in love and on a boat in Florida, this year inside a skyline beside a thousand strangers on 11th Avenue in Manhattan. There was one a few years ago where i just went to sleep. Awake meant pain and so i just tried to sleep.
Perhaps you have to have a little bit of hope to believe that beauty can be found, to believe that life does come back, that something can surprise you. And maybe they’re somehow related. Maybe wonder feeds hope and hope feeds wonder. You see something beautiful and it reminds you that it’s possible to see something beautiful.
We got in a cab last night and laughed at our own destination. “We want to see the fireworks,” i told the driver, hoping he would know just the place. He took us to 49th Street and 7th Avenue and we walked the rest of the way, joining the giant crowd on 11th, as far west as they would let us go. We had hoped to go to the edge, to stand against the water, just us and the bright night sky. Instead, we had to watch between the buildings. And though it was not the view we had imagined, it was still beyond incredible.
The grand finale came as constant color, thunder shapes dancing and painting the sky. And it struck me that we were all there by choice and by chance. We were there to watch the wonder, no one telling us what to do or how to respond. In the final minute, as the skies exploded, we did the same, all of us clapping and cheering. We had become one thing. It was a significant moment for me in this my new home, not forever but for now. This city never stops. People call it a monster and talk about feeling swallowed and alone. People constantly give up and go home with broken dreams, feeling invisible, feeling forgotten.
But last night i saw it pause. i saw thousands of people walk west with hope to catch a glimpse and then i saw them see it. i can’t say why each person went or what their story was before the moment. i can only tell you that i went to feel alive. i went because it’s too easy to forget, to believe the black night sky is only always black. i went to stand next to my friends in hopes that we could share this, remember this.
Last night, i hope you felt the fireworks. i hope you saw the wonder when skies filled up with color. And in the moment, i hope you were reminded that it’s possible, that beauty still happens. We don’t only live in books awake and dreams asleep. We are living our stories you and i, with dreams inside us undeniable, love to give and people to walk with.
i hope for you what i hope for myself. i hope for you the hope to know it.
Peace to you.
jamie