Buntings, Fireworks, and the Ties That Hold

I have never needed much encouragement when it comes to decorating for the Fourth. Next to Christmas, it has always been my favorite holiday. I love my traditional patriotic gear: the oversized bows on the fence gates, little flags tucked into flowerpots, buntings tied to porch railings, and Old Glory lifting proudly in the lakefront breezes. I even love leaving it all up well past the holiday itself. To me, there has never been anything gaudy about red, white, and blue decorations. Those colors carry so many memories. And the older I get, the more those memories come rushing in as soon as I start hauling out the decorations.

Some of them take me all the way back to my parents’ cottage in Palisades Park, Michigan where Mom’s patriotic buntings hung from the porch and made the whole place look festive no matter how humid the day or how tired the old fabric had become. Some memories are of my own young family: children on decorated tricycles and bikes in the neighborhood parade, paper plates sagging under the weight of hamburgers and potato salad, the lakefront waiting for darkness and fireworks. And some are of Yankee, our collie who was born on the Fourth of July and named for the day. A dog who was brave enough to bark at delivery trucks, squirrels, and anything else that crossed his path but was reduced to a trembling heap of drool whenever fireworks exploded. For years, one of our family’s Fourth of July traditions was celebrating Independence Day while trying to convince Yankee the world was not ending.

That is the thing about a holiday you celebrate over and over across a lifetime. It stops belonging to one year alone. It becomes a patchwork of all the years that came before it.

Which is why I can never decorate for the Fourth without thinking about the summer of 2020, when parades were canceled, fireworks were silenced, and the whole country seemed to be holding its breath. That year there were only four of us at the lake house: my husband, my daughter, my mother, and me. And I remember standing in the storage area, looking at the bins of patriotic decorations wondering why I was even bothering. What was there to celebrate? No guests were coming. No parade would roll by. No spontaneous gatherings would spill across porches and patios. We were all just trying not to get sick.

And yet, I dragged the bins downstairs anyway.

I set out the red, white, and blue plates and napkins. I hung the buntings on the porch railings. I tucked the little flags into potted plants and sat down on the front steps with a cold drink, much like I do now. Somewhere in the middle of all that fussing and fluffing, my spirits lifted. I remember realizing that surviving such a frightening time together was reason enough to mark the day. Maybe especially then.

Two years later, grief gave me a different reason to hesitate. My husband’s service in Vietnam had always been part of our family’s understanding of patriotism, but after the cancers linked to his tour of duty took his life, even opening the holiday bins felt heavy. Holidays have a way of measuring who is missing as much as who is present. That truth can hit with startling force in the smallest of moments. 

For me, one of those moments came with the memory of my treasured vintage buntings—the old ones from my parents’ cottage—that my husband had tossed out after deciding they were too ratty to save. He was wrong, of course. They were faded, frayed, and held together in spots by green twist ties, but for me they were precious heirlooms. They carried my family’s history in their worn cotton folds.

Then, after I finally bought replacements and hung the new buntings, I spotted it: a rusty old grommet still dangling from the porch railing, held in place by one of those ridiculous green twist ties. It had survived my husband’s purge and an entire Midwestern winter. I laughed out loud when I saw it. That tiny remnant felt like a message. A survivor. Proof that not everything old and beloved disappears when we think it has. Even today, it dangles there with a tenacity I can’t help but admire.

Maybe that’s one reason this 250th birthday of our country feels especially meaningful to me.

Holidays and anniversaries ask us not only to remember, but to notice what remains. Families do this naturally. We tell the same stories. We set out the inherited dishes. We laugh about the old mishaps. We make room for the newest babies and the newest in-laws; the people who were not there in the beginning but now cannot be imagined outside the picture. Nations are not entirely different. They, too, are held together by memory, ritual, endurance, and the stubborn desire to gather again after hardship. I think of my husband then, too – of his service, of all it meant to him, and of what it eventually cost him.

So this year, as I fasten the buntings to the porch railings and count out chairs for sixteen family members, I know I’m celebrating more than a holiday. I’m celebrating continuity. I’m celebrating the people who raised me, the family my husband and I built, the loved ones I have lost, and the little ones who are still growing into the stories they will one day share about our family’s Fourth of July gatherings.

At 250, our country, like most families, carries scars, disagreements, grief, and hard-won joys. It has known division, as well as devotion, disillusion and hope. I believe there is something sacred about marking its birthday. We need the music, the smoke in the air, the laughter on the patio, the sight of flags lifting in the wind. We need the reminder that what lasts is not perfection, but persistence.

And that, to me, is reason enough to celebrate.

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On August 15, The second book in my Let’s Go with Lulu children’s book series, DJ and Lulu Go to the Car Wash, launches! Details forthcoming. Story is based on the real-life story about adventures with my oldest grandson.

September 6-22, I will hike a section of the El Camino again with Laura Davis’ group, The Writer’s Journey. I plan to do research for a third memoir about my journey through love and loss while hiking the Camino in 2024. 

October 9-11, I will attend the She Writes Press author retreat at the Westin Rancho Mirage Resort in Palm Springs, CA. Thrilled to be selected as a presenter for the panel, “Marketing for Memoirists.”

Follow Julie by visiting her website, subscribe to her bimonthly newsletters, and listen to previous podcast recordings where she discusses topics like adoption, identity, family relationships, sisterhood and belonging.

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