I got a big kick out of the Fourth of July again this year. It’s my favorite holiday. You get a day off. Everyone is in a festive mood. There’s excitement and anticipation. There’s activities for the adults and the kids. There’s cholesterol laden food, and smiles, and greetings, and happy faces everywhere. But wait, there’s more!

The celebration is one where nothing of substance is expected. You don’t have to buy presents. You don’t have to go over to Grandma’s house. Folks coming to your house is completely optional. The Fourth of July holiday can be a group activity or an individual observance.

Having reached the maturity of my years, having kids and grandkids that live miles away, I’m in a place where the quiet serene celebration engendered by sitting at home is a gift from my Maker. So I did.

From my house I can see the fireworks on the other side of town, so I don’t miss that. And I’ve got this great TV. Georgia Public Broadcasting televised the Independence Day Concert at the U. S. Capitol. Aretha Franklin sang; Barry Manilow performed; the cast of The Jersey Boys sang Frankie Valli’s hits; the Muppets from Sesame Street were there; and (be still my heart) Natasha Bedingfield sang. The National Symphony provided their rendition of patriotic marches, and there were fireworks dancing about the Washington Monument. It was a joyful celebration. 

Earlier in the day we took a ride along the back roads of Northwest Georgia. A red-tailed hawk surfed the unseen waves of air above Pine Log Creek; rabbits scurried across our paths under the canopy of an oak covered byway; and a fawn watched us, trembling and frozen in fear as we stopped to marvel at her beauty. Slowly I lowered the window; more slowly I reached for the camera; even more slowly I brought it up, focused, and prepared to take her image home with me. It was not to be. In an instant she was gone, blended into the foliage of the forest.

On we traveled across that tiny, tiny section of America we are fortunate enough to  occupy, over wooden, one-lane bridges, spanning bubbling brooks of pristine water, up foothills into mountain majesty, down into valleys teeming with crop reaching for abundant harvest. It was the Fourth of July and we celebrated what, for us, is America.

Those roads had been traveled before. That hawk had been soared above us before; and, while that fawn was new born, her cousins had scampered before our car on previous days. We’d traveled those narrow isolated pathways on many a Saturday before. Yet, on the Fourth of July there’s deeper meaning that on previous days taken for granted. “This land is my land; this land is your land ....” We are Americans; we are blessed by this land.

Down from the mountain heights, down the winding road, across the valley, beside the rivers, we wandered home. It was only until eight houses before ours we saw the real celebration of freedom.

Festooned with American flags the house stood out in stark contrast to ours. There was a visible display that was a proclamation: “I’m proud to be an American.” The people who live in our house, unadorned with flags or other manifestations of patriotism, are American by accident of birth. In the flag decorated house, where English is spoken with a heavy Hispanic accent, being American is a choice.