Borne on the Fourth of July

Some of my earliest memories are of the Fourth of July. As a toddler, when my memories are first really starting to stick, we lived right in between Courthouse and Rosslyn. That meant we were a short distance away from the Marine Corps War Memorial right there near the banks of the Potomac River overlooking the city. A lot of those formative years were spent with my mom and/or grandparents taking me down to that memorial, running barefoot on the grass, DC shining across the water.

That vantage point is not only my favorite of the city but it was also a prime viewing spot to take in fireworks bursting over the National Mall every July. Families would gather on the grass under the vigilant gaze of bronze figures hoisting Old Glory atop Mount Suribachi.

Once we went full-on suburban, that meant the usual block party thing. All the various cul-de-sacs around the neighborhood would each have their own thing going not unlike Halloween but with a lot less costumes and a lot more grilling out. The families would consolidate their fireworks, usually from those bundles on sale at superstores but every now and again you'd get some fucking champion that got fireworks in Pennsylvania or the Carolinas that were illegal in Virginia. That meant fireworks were going all night set to a soundtrack of Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty under that summer sky.

By the end of elementary school, I was a full-fledged Boy Scout and camping out every summer deep in the Appalachian. Those were some of my favorite memories of the summer, really. I got to hang out in the woods with my friends away from it all hiking or learning to do all sorts of pioneering things by day, playing cards and being lulled to sleep by the steady cadence of raindrops on canvas at night. That's also where I developed my lifelong fear of spiders but that's a whole other story.

Anyway, if we happened to be camping during Independence Day, we'd take a break from the usual outdoor shenanigans to watch fireworks explode over Lake Merriweather with a combination of bottle rockets and mortars. More often than not though, we were directly downwind from the display so all that smoke and ash (some of it still lit) would eventually rain back down on us. So that sucked but at least the fireworks were pretty.

Now well out of grad school, Independence Days are kind of hit or miss in terms of what goes on; there isn't a sense of regularity anymore. Some years, I'll go out in to the country with friends and fire away bottle rockets straight from the beers we just drank. Some years, I'll go to a ballgame and hang around the ballpark and navy yards. Some years, I'll just cook out with friends. But, rest assured, I'll make sure I mark the occasion.