The days surrounding July 4th normally trumpet the ease of summer, but this year’s music is different. It was Tuesday, the fifth of July, when the horns gave way to the unrelenting beat of the future.
A careful listener would have heard the cues sooner. On Friday, my oldest went away with a buddy and his family. We packed my boy’s things and wrote down all the phone numbers. His dad and I spoke out of both sides of our mouths, reminding him to call if anything made him uncomfortable and assuring him that everything would be fine.
Thump, thump.
Saturday the wind and rain washed the rhythm away, but it returned on Sunday, pulsing as I came up the stairs and saw Connor in combat boots and camouflage. Once a young boy I taught, now a man preparing for basic training, he stood before our church and led us in the pledge of allegiance to the American flag.
Thump, thump.
Monday, Independence Day, I sat with friends and confessed my hang-ups about fireworks. I ratted myself out. I am not like them, at ease with things that burn hot and explode. I grew up avoiding sparklers; my mom hated them; I think I know why as I watch my own kids running and whooping with abandon, silhouetted by embers and shrouded in smoke. I force myself to breathe, to remember that this day is like every other day: the possibility of death hangs over us all.
The illusion of control, responded one friend, and I remember that now. Thump, thump. The cadence of the future.
These things I press into the background on Independence Day, the unofficial beginning of summer. I prefer to pay attention to the merry bells of fried chicken and fruit salad and conversations about books. I had all of those; I had a grand time, but then came the fifth of July.
The day wasn’t all that unusual. We were on our way from here to there, me and my children. My two youngest sat securely in the back, one still in a car seat. My oldest, safely returned, sat in the front, long legs wiggling for room, head resting on the shoulder strap of his seat belt.
In my car, we still listen to regular commercial radio. We sing along. We were doing just that when “Ohio” started. I sang along; I don’t think my kids knew the words. At the end of it, my oldest adjusted ever so slightly in his seat and said, “That . . . is he singing about war?”
I took my eyes off the road just long enough to recognize that he was shook. I saw him, twelve-years-old, on the cusp of adolescence, fascinated by history, steeped in the All-American weekend, now faced with:
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We’re finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should’ve been done long ago
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
I turned down the radio. I said, “I don’t think I can answer your question without crying.”
I did the best I could, to explain what I remembered from history. I did the best I could to frame it for him, but having to say it out loud, that college kids were shot and killed during a protest, this changed things for both of us.
Shot, I said, more than likely by people the same age as them.
People the same age as Connor, I thought. People only six years older than my boy asking the question.
I drove very quietly the rest of the way, and he said little.
His independence day is coming. He will finally be on his own. He will make decisions: will he be a soldier, a student, both, neither? What causes will he claim, what will he deem worth fighting for?
I might be able to shape that, but the truth is that beyond nature and nurture, the time we live in will play its part in his history, just as it did for all of those students and soldiers on May 4, 1970. The U.S. incursion of Cambodia. College protesters out of hand for the weekend, throwing things. A building on fire. Stressed young soldiers in a tense political climate. A shot heard, but never identified, and then the Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire. At least two of the four students shot at Kent State were reportedly innocent bystanders.
I thought of Connor in his fatigues. I thought of the fireworks from the day before, and my movement away from fear. Quotes from Ecclesiastes swirled in my head, lines about time and chance overtaking us all, lines about the wise preferring the house of mourning over the house of mirth.
I hear the drumming. In my mind, I choose to have faith and not fear. I let him go. I will be fighting this battle the rest of my life, I realize. It is good that he learns these things, that I learn these things, grapple with them, not running, feeling the beat of the bigger picture.