The Works

Every year since I can remember, I've celebrated the birth of America. Granted, for years I lived outside of this country but in the summer we'd make it back for the scorching hot summers where we'd thirst for lemonade, baked cookies and playing space ship in the Knickerbocker house. Those were the summers - the summer vacations which seemed to take months, years to pass. When every single day, every memory became etched into our minds as a memory of a blissful time.

There was the time when P.S. 13 burned down across the street on Getty Ave. We rushed to the corner deli with our quarters and dimes to buy some candy cigarettes and fooled our naive parents. There was the time when we went to a neighbors house to watch the snake - and oh what a snake that was - eat the little mouse. We were fascinated.

We'd watch scary movies like the Exorcist and make lame drinks with spices and fool our other cousins. We'd have birthday parties, dinner parties, tea parties, all sorts of soirees to celebrate the endless summer nights. We'd fight with our grandmother when she babysat us and stormed out of the house in a mid summer night's rain to prove that we were right. It was about who ate the last piece of cake.

And then the fourth would roll around. We'd play with sparklers in the backyard or go for a drive through the hills and usually stop on highways and catch displays at all angles. We'd celebrate in a way that only first generation children do- with equal pride and confusion- trying to decide what significance this Independence Day held for any of us.

But those were the memorable summers, long before the bitterness. Long before the anger, long before the relationships which will never live again. Memories live on in pieces in our minds. As happy times, of a sunny childhood in which every night's sky was always lit up by works of color, of theme and of independence.

The truth is, we all still live in self-made prisons.

"Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. Only you can free yourself." -Marley

Happy 4th America.