The Coming Escape

I’m not sure I have ever needed to see everyone’s family 4th of July picnic pictures more than I needed to see them this morning. Out of an abundance of caution, Pam and I were laying low this past weekend. After several friends close to us came down with either COVID or the flu, and with our Maine trip only a few days away, the very last thing either of us needs is to come down with either one of those things. Discretion being the better part of valor, we skipped church and the Dunnevant family 4th celebration, hunkering down here at the house. We did whip up some delicious brats on the grill and played some patriotic music, but it wasn’t the same. The 4th of July is not a holiday meant to be celebrated alone.

So, this morning I began flipping through the family photos on Facebook, including some from the Dunnevant gathering up in Ashland. Group pictures of families holding little American flags, the wide-eyed faces of children being lit up by the glow of sparklers, babies sound asleep in the arms of uncles and aunts. They were all beautiful. I needed to see them, needed confirmation that the entire country wasn’t going to hell.

Earlier in the day yesterday came news of yet another psychopath with a rifle opening fire on a parade in suburban Chicago. Six dead, thirty in the hospital, and the deranged little suspect plastered all over the news, some nobody rapper, another confused young man with a deadly weapon. The rest of the news seemed filled with despair, the suggestion that America has literally nothing to celebrate anymore was heavily covered in almost every story I read. To hear the media tell the story we are hopelessly and irreparably divided and the future almost certainly contains either civil war or formal dissolution. Its hard not to agree with such a negative assessment. But then I look at the endless succession of pictures of grateful and happy celebrations and find reason for optimism and a reminder that its the media’s job to attract eyeballs, with the truth—only if absolutely necessary. Sometimes the perspective of people who report news isn’t the same as the perspective of people who read it. So, as Pam and I prepare to leave for Maine, we will chose to focus on the reasons we have for being grateful and happy, not the steady drumbeat of gloom and despair that attempts to make happiness and gratefulness feel like guilty pleasures.

While we are retreating to Maine for six weeks at a time that makes it feel like we’re the last ones to get out of town alive, I know better. America will still be here when we get back. For those of you who are thinking…Wait, isn’t Maine part of America? Yes and no. Yes, Maine is one of the fifty states. No, where we are headed feels like a place set apart from the rest of the country, something closer to heaven than hell. 

We’ll send pictures. I owe you that much.