The Fourth of July

State Capitol Building, Bismarck, North Dakota

July 4th used to be my favorite holiday. Now it's just a day -- a day off from work; a day of watching TV and if the stars align, taking a nap. 

When one lives in a small town, summer holidays are joyful. The early morning sun beaming through the kitchen window warms your skin; your sinews tingle with anticipation.You rise early to stir up a peach coffee cake and lean against the toasty oven door to twirl the dials on the kitchen timer. The kids are still snuffling softly in their beds.

The heavy air hints of a coming sunset thunderstorm; my cotton blouse clings to the plumb between my breasts and hips. The radio on the kitchen counter thumps with John Anderson croaking out Swingin'. The phone on the wall rings and I flip the volume low on the transistor. My little sister is calling from Mom and Dad's. "What time are y'all coming over?" she asks. She's flown up from Fort Worth with her little son the afternoon before, because she, like me, knows how much the Fourth of July means. "No one's up yet," I say. "Give us a couple of hours."

I rap on bedroom doors. "Let's go!" My sons stagger out of their rooms and woozily flick shower knobs to scalding. Then they dump all manner of fireworks -- Roman candles, bottle rockets, "inferno" fountains, M-80's -- hey, how'd those get in there? -- out of paper grocery bags onto the living room floor and argue over which belongs to whom. I twist Saran Wrap around my coffee cake and grab my Minolta SLR off the bedroom bureau; snatch my purse and herd everyone and everything into the car.

At 9:00 we pull into the driveway. The garage door is wide open and Dad is sitting inside on a lawn chair nursing a stained mug of coffee and flicking his cigarette into a sand-filled coffee can.  Upstairs Mom's slicing hard-boiled eggs with a paring knife, dropping the yellow-white rings into a Tupperware bowl of boiled baby potatoes. Apple and cherry pies rest on cooling racks on the counter. She swabs her damp forehead with a tissue.

My sister is parked on the sofa in front of the TV where Cyndi Lauper's bee-stung lips are warbling Time After Time. "What time you think we should leave?" she asks. "It's gonna be hell getting a parking spot...and it's hot," I say. Lissa, the transplanted Texan, reminds me that I have no earthly idea what "hot" is.

We have to finalize transportation arrangements. Since my older sister and her husband won't saunter over until three p.m. or so, they are not part of the equation. My little brother and his boys like to go their own way -- they'll get there when they get there. Mom has long ago sworn off sun, plus she's hoping to grab a snooze once everyone vacates the premises. That leaves approximately seven people to pile into Dad's Lincoln to traverse the river and pray for a parking spot that isn't two miles and two hulking coolers away. Our ultimate destination is the curb in front of Mandan's McDonald's, where my sister-in-law works the breakfast shift and my brother loiters waiting for her to doff her McD's apron and join the party. We stake out our spot on the street's edge by parking our coolers and blankets and troop inside the joint to order up pancakes plunked inside Styrofoam containers and where Dad can get his coffee fix. We hover, waiting for one party of the three hundred clamoring hordes to depart so we can finally sit down at a sticky Formica table. I'm itchy to get out of there and get down to the business of snapping pictures. Finally my sis and I lower ourselves to the curb and commence to doing what we do best -- making smart-alecky comments about anything and everything around us.

Before long we hear the faint trill of snare drums and the bassy bray of trombones. The parade has begun. Viet Nam vets march past us hoisting the American flag and the black MIA banner. I stand and my chest tightens. Damn, I'm patriotic. The Mandan High School marching band follows behind and I nod in deference to my long-ago school days. My sister didn't attend Mandan High, so it's just color and pomp to her.

Dad and my brothers (little brother has made his way over, as he inevitably always does) stand behind us and comment on the line of farm implements and antique cars. "I had one of those," is Dad's clarion call. A polka band atop a flatbed squeezes out an accordion solo. I click the shutter on my camera with one hand while herding my boys away from the street with the other, when they venture a step too far to collect candy thrown by everyone participating in the promenade. They barely avoid the hooves of the draft horses in their quest to claim bragging rights to the biggest mound of candy.

I'm feeling a little queasy from the combination of sun fever and prefab pancakes, but I'm exhilarated.  We gather up our blankets and miscellaneous detritus and tromp, sunburned, the two miles back to the car. We never even comment on the spectacle -- it is what it is -- a part of us; a part of our essence.

Mom's face crinkles with concern as we alight the stairs; she searches Dad's face for hints of sun stroke. But Dad, like me, is exuberant. He lives for this day.

The burgers are sizzling on the grill; big bowls of potato salad and baked beans claim the dining room table. Dill pickle spears repose in the crystal relish tray. My brother claims the couch and stretches out to pseudo-nap. My sister and I sit cross-legged on the living room carpet and laugh at nothing. Kids do what kids do; rambunct the staircase and holler. It's now almost 3:00 and still no sign of my big sister and her husband. I'm mildly irritated because I'm starving and the food looks sooo good. My sister-in-law will eventually pity-eat a slice of my coffee cake; I found the recipe on the back of a can of Libby's Sliced Peaches in Heavy Syrup, and it's my go-to pot luck contribution, because it's easy to make and almost impossible to ruin. It really stands no chance against home-baked cherry pie with a lattice crust, however.

Dad is down in the garage smoking again. I'll join him as soon as I'm tactfully able. Dad is  anticipating my brother-in-law's arrival -- his smoking and BS'ing buddy. That makes at least two of us who are impatiently waiting.

My little brother is outside entertaining his kids and mine with all manner of mischief. My big brother on the couch squinches his eyes open, then closed again. Mom announces to no one in particular that "maybe I should give your sister a call."  My brother rolls over on his side and grouses, "let's just eat." Of course, Mom would never broach that notion.

By and by, the missing couple arrives; my sister toting a tray of deviled eggs. Mom gushes over this offering and declares that she needs to get the recipe, as if she (or even me) does not know how to pipe mustard-mayo into boiled egg crevices and sprinkle them with paprika.

The entire scattered family, their antennae quivering, descend upon the dining room table like ravenous raccoons, pawing and snatching food items with abandon. Chinaware plates piled high, they find the nearest folding chair, empty floor space, recliner arm, to perch on and savor the repast as if it's their final prison meal before the noose drops.

The bellyful re-energizes my brother. He badgers us to play a board game or at least break out a deck of cards.  My little sister and I sit it out. We'll go our own way, which is downstairs to the family room to watch Beavis and Butthead and giggle. My kids eventually saunter in and join our MTV party.

Unspoken, everyone is waiting for night to fall and for the pièce de résistance -- the lighting of the fireworks. Once dusk descends, everyone congregates on the front stoop -- Mom sips from a mug of coffee that will keep her awake until two a.m. Dad settles in beside her and fires up another smoke. My brothers become the kids in the clutch -- setting up combustibles in the middle of the street and lighting them afire. I hold out my arm to bar my kids from running out too close and suffering debilitating burns. A couple of houses down the block, someone is firing up bottle rockets, which zoom and whiz and pirouette. My brother-in-law scuttles out of the way of the flaming missiles just in time. My oldest son wants desperately to set off one of his showering fountains, so I pull out my lighter and touch it to a "punk", wait for it to glow red and carefully hand it over. He rushes into the street, lights the fuse and runs. Life is inherently dangerous. A little bit of risk gets one's corpuscles pulsing.



The family show continues for an hour or so. I hear the rumble of thunder in the western sky. Or is it fireworks? The horizon flashes orange. A nighttime thunderstorm is the perfect ending to a glorious Independence Day.

The clock ticks; the showers of sparks become redundant. My kids are beginning to wither. It's late. Time to lift their dozy bodies into the back seat and depart. We say our goodbyes, knowing we'll meet again just like this the next Fourth of July and we'll follow exactly the same routine.

I arrive home and spy my countenance in the bathroom mirror. My face is pale salmon except for two white rings circling my eyes. I change out of my sweat-dampened shorts and tank top and snuggle inside my living room rocker, light up a smoke and savor the bliss.

Today was perfectly perfect.

Thanksgiving At Home

I'm not a good cook. I learned how to cook out of necessity. As a young wife, I quickly learned that men don't appreciate peanut butter toast for dinner.

My mom, on the other hand, was a renowned cook. She used recipe cards sometimes, but just as reminders. She also was a short order cook at my Uncle Howard's diner for a time in the mid-sixties, so she really had to know how to juggle. Saturday nights, that place was buzzing and she was the lone cook and often the waitress, too.

The reason she also had to wait tables was because my cousin Karen and I were immune to working. Of course, we were age nine and ten, but that's no excuse. Karen could actually pull off waitressing if she set her mind to it. She was always someone who could flip on the charm. I, on the other hand, didn't even know what "charm" meant, unless it referred to Cary Grant on a black and white TV screen in Uncle Howard's apartment.

I tried waiting tables one weekend night when it suddenly dawned on me that things were really hopping and that the people in the booths were starting to act surly.

"I'll have a pepperoni pizza," the guy said.

"Okay, what do you want on that?" I asked.

"Uh, pepperoni."

I wrote "pepperoni pizza" in my best cursive on the pad, tore off the sheet and clipped it to the clothesline that fed into the kitchen. I pulled a couple of amber plastic glasses off the pyramid, stuck them beneath the Pepsi fountain, then dropped ice cubes inside. A non-moron would have thought to put the ice in first. With over-filled glasses in hand and Pepsi-Cola running down my arm, I delivered the drinks to the table, grabbed a couple of napkins out of the metal holder and sopped up the overflowing soda.

Then I retired. Forever.

One might ask, why didn't Mom school me in the ways of cooking and acting normal? I don't know. I think maybe she was just tired. She'd already raised three kids who were three years apart in age and she still had two toddlers at home. And here she was, cooking for Uncle Howard to refill the home coffers that were direly sparse. The best she could hope was for me to stay out of the way and not embarrass her.

I also accept my share of the blame. I was sorely disinterested in homemaking. Of course, I was a kid. But still, I understand there are young girls who like cooking and baking and sewing. And cleaning. None of those girls were me. I liked coloring. I liked creating things out of bric-a-brac. Kleenex Barbie dresses. I liked making things that had never before existed. I was a dreamer. A lazy dreamer.

As a grown-up I never once made Thanksgiving dinner. Everybody went to Mom and Dad's for Thanksgiving. I was charged with bringing a "dish", just like my older sister was. My sister-in-law possessed the "mom" gene, so she'd show up with my brother and their kids and dive right in to help get dinner on the table, while I nibbled on green olives from the relish tray. My offerings were sometimes good, sometimes putrid. Don't try out new recipes for holidays when you are invited to your mom's house. Bring buns.

Mom always had the other-worldly long table set up in the living room, covered with a starched white cloth. A few candles sprinkled the table and, of course, the Hallmark paper turkey with its wings spreading out by magic -- or by some kind of accordion-pleated slight of hand. The little kids always loved playing with that turkey -- Mom had to buy a new one each year -- little hands would make a wreck of it, scrunching it together, then flaying out the "feathers", then flattening them back again.

Her relish tray held black and green olives, baby dill pickles, and red and white striped radishes. She was the only one who ate the radishes. Once she finally sat down at the table, when everyone else was already primed for a second helping, she'd crunch on those radishes. She loved them. Nobody else could tolerate them.

While I grazed the relish tray, Mom sweated over the stove top. Dad dozed in his recliner, endeavoring hopelessly to keep up with various buzzes of conversation. The little kids tromped about in the basement, their tiny feet raising a booming ruckus and the occasional squeal.

I ventured into the kitchen a couple of times; made a couple of meandering swoops; the whiff of pie crust launching my salivary glands. Mom baked pies like an actual baker would bake pies. No Pillsbury ready-to-roll crust. She actually knew how to make pie crust. I tried it once. I apparently did it wrong. She made cherry and mince meat (which I still don't know what the heck that is) and pumpkin and pecan. Sometimes chocolate.

Dad's sole duty was carving the turkey. He was actually quite proficient at it. He could carve a turkey in about five minutes, with no spatter or greasy mess. He was like a private waiting for his orders. "Richard, come in here and carve the turkey." "Yes, sergeant! I'm on it, sergeant!".

Mom made the absolute best dressing. That recipe, if there ever was a recipe, is lost to the ages. She whipped potatoes in the big kettle with her hand mixer and stirred up home-made gravy. She baked sweet potatoes with a crumble of brown sugar and miniature marshmallows.

Her only concession to pre-made conveniences was Rhode's frozen dinner rolls and canned cranberry sauce. I actually once cooked homemade cranberry sauce, and to be honest, I prefer the grooved jelly roll that shimmies out of the can.

I will say that I'm a great dishwasher. I really excel. For some reason, though, I was always relegated to drying. My sister and I held our cotton towels in hand and dickered silently over who was going to dry the big blue bowl. I liked the dishes ritual, but I never knew where anything belonged. Mom, no doubt, spent the day after Thanksgiving rearranging her cupboards, redepositing items in their proper place, after I'd stashed the potato masher atop the Corning Ware and the carving knife in the non-knife drawer.

It's odd that a holiday that revolves around eating could mean so much. I had my boys around me; my big brother cracked wise. My sister-in-law was the daughter Mom never had, even though she had four of them. My little brother was cute and happy with his two boys around him, too. Dad strained to make sense of the cacophony of cross-table talk. Mom rose out of her chair on queue, replenishing platters and bowls.

Once the dishes were done, a deck of cards was pulled out of the junk drawer and a marathon game ensued.

Then we stopped to help ourselves to delectable cherry pie with homemade whipped cream and sometimes a dollop of vanilla ice cream and tall mugs of coffee.

Wide-eyed, hopped up on caffeine, I trundled my sleepy boys into the back seat of the car and we lazed our way down the dusky streets to home.

And next year would be exactly the same.

I miss "next year".