Today is the 4th of July, Independence Day in the US. This is a holiday that has felt complicated since as long as I have understood it as a day to celebrate this country. As a child, I loved the fireworks. I remember going to see them for the first time over the lake in Carrollton, Georgia as a 7 year old. My younger brother and I brought buckets to catch the sparkles. We held out the orange McDonald’s pails with jack-o-lantern faces left over from our first Halloween not realizing the embers would fade before they ever reached us. We were expecting magic, and there was. We were not expecting the loud sounds that sent us running back to our parents to watch the show from the safety of their laps.
We had moved to Georgia the year before. It was 1991–the first year I can remember writing in the top right-hand corner of my notebooks. It was a move that felt temporary. At this point I had lived in Colombia, France, Holland, and Puerto Rico. Nothing felt permanent. Every home was a stepping stone. I think my parents saw this move that way, too. Georgia was not a first choice so much as it was a necessity. It was a move made for the sake of opportunity with my brother and my futures in mind. I don’t know the whole story, but I know that part is true.
I could sense my parents’ ambivalence from the moment I saw my mother cry at the airport in San Juan. My aunt walked us onto the plane. She took the photo of me and my brother in the burgundy seats that holds the memory of that moment. I don’t need the photo to remember how the fabric itched against the backs of my sweaty knees. It is the first time I remember being aware of my parents’ fear, or maybe it was my own fear staring back at me from the depths of their pupils. On arrival I watched my parents work through communicating in a language that I did not know and that they seemed to only know slightly better and felt scared. Georgia was a different universe and I had no guide.
For months I fell silent outside of home. The loud, performative, attention seeker stepped back so my observant side could take care of me. I watched my peers and neighbors. I learned the language without ever speaking a word, especially not to the speech therapist who was intent on tricking me into saying something, anything. I came to understand the racial power dynamics and tried to make sense of where I fit in. I took note of the local uniform and insisted on it when I outgrew the clothes we’d brought with us: white Keds, socks with lace on the cuff, oversized t-shirts, and bike shorts. I became determined to seize back my confidence by fitting in.
Had my parents embraced our new life with open arms, had they felt just one way about our new home instead of many, had they better masked the bruises left by racism, I have no doubt I would have eagerly embraced America in all her mythological glory. I would have been her greatest cheerleader with red, white, and blue ribbons in my hair. Instead my America included more than states. It included countries and histories that were not covered in school. Something as simple as a banana held a lesson about colonialism and fruit companies that muddied any hopes of satiating my hunger for clarity. America offered my parents dreams with one hand, and with the other it suffocated them. It welcomed my father as if it had not had a hand in expelling him from his homeland. It held the power to vote just out of reach from my mother until she left her home, too. I wanted to love America, but the America I knew was not worthy of devotion. Anyway, I was not American. I was reminded of this every time someone asked me where I was from.
I was not American, but as the years passed I became more American than anything else. English comes more easily to me than Spanish. I’ve spent 32 years of my life in the US. I see its underbelly, and I see its shine. I know how it has been hard for my parents, and at times for me. I also know what it has offered us and why we are still here.
My daughters are American. They share my family’s history, of course, but their birth certificates grant them the right to claim their belonging with a greater degree of certainty. Their father is American and that helps, too.
Last year we took them to see the 4th of July fireworks for the first time. We went with my parents. Their neighbors, a friendly group of families from their cul-de-sac who share the extra tomatoes from their gardens and help each other clear the driveways when it snows, use their cars to section off an area of a parking lot known to be a good spot to catch the show. It was an oasis amidst trucks with Trump bumper stickers and classic cars brought out for the occasion that I worried my curious kids might smudge. The family from across the street brought sparklers, snap poppers, and glow necklaces. I brought ear protection for our kids. My eldest brought a bucket just in case. I spent the majority of the time hiding my fears, worried that my eldest would catch a glimpse of them in my eyes.
My girls put on their earmuffs before the fireworks started. They cuddled with my parents while I held Mike’s hand. We watched the explosions together, our faces turned up towards a sky filled with magic and the smokey shadows it leaves behind. My father, who is startled by the slightest sound at home, watched with his arms around my child. This year, he bought them a case of snap poppers to bring and share with the neighbors. Unbeknownst to me, he had ordered it while we were still on vacation together in Paris. The box was waiting for us when we all came home.
The gesture surprised me. I’ve always felt that to embrace my Americanness would be to shun my father. I could enjoy the fireworks only from a distance, divorced from the reason they explode in this sky, on this day. The snap poppers are an invitation to not just observe, but to participate. But then, there have been other invitations, haven’t there? There are photos of me in my Keds that prove it. Tonight we will all go watch the fireworks once again. The Trump stickers will still scare me, and I’ll still worry when we pass the families who would look at me and tell me I don’t belong here. Each of us will look to the sky and see something different. I won’t need a bucket to catch what is mine.