Happy Fourth of July!
Yesterday’s holiday was something I was looking forward to. It has been a rough few weeks at work and having a three-day weekend to help me get caught up on some household/garden/garage chores was just what I needed. An extra day! Always a good thing.
But more than that, I was looking forward to the holiday. Ever since we moved to this big little town, holidays are so much more fun. Fourth of July is no exception. The highlight of the day is a gathering in a small park to listen to the Longmont Symphony Orchestra play. This little park, taking up about half a city block, becomes crammed full of families with picnics, and four hours of excellent music. This little park’s claim to fame is that it has more trees in it than any other of the 34 parks in town.
Last year, my mother, Tater, and I biked to the park to hear the concert. We slung our lawn chairs on our backs, filled our water bottles, and headed off. Little did we know that this was a Big To-Do. Scattered around the park were elaborate setups – families had brought out their best and set up pop-ups, laying out a spread of food that would rival any celebratory feast. Other families came with chairs, blankets, coolers, and portable bbq pits, opening up patio umbrellas to give themselves shade. It turns out there was a contest, and families had been showing up at the park to win for many years.
This year it was just Tater and I, as mom is still in Missouri. We packed a cooler bag with sandwiches, baby carrots, plums, and oreos, plus some soda and water. We didn’t bike, but drove. We parked and walked a couple of blocks to the park, and found a shady spot big enough for our two lawn chairs. The Longmont Youth Orchestra was playing, and we settled in. Well, I settled in, Tater went running off to find friends to play with. I pulled out my book and sat comfortably in the shade listening to the music. After the youth finished, a folk singer stepped up, and finally, the Longmont Symphony Orchestra.
The event was bittersweet for me. Several times I felt tear-y, and memories were flooding me like crazy. There was the symphony playing John Phillips Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever, which just reminded me of the days when I and my piccolo played that same song in Marching Band in the late 70’s. There were the cute kids in their red-white-and-blue clothing, which reminded me of when my kids were little and I would dress them up for the holidays. There were the tables of food – bbq, fried chicken, potato salad, fruit salad, and at one table, a lemon layer cake as big as a Volkswagon. his just reminded me of the parties we used to have, with amazing food that everyone brought. There were the groups of friends, the gatherings of families, which just reminded me of my own family back in Missouri, and my friends. I have not been able to make the kind of new friends here that would give me a group to gather with for holidays or special events. And there was the fact that I was sitting there reading a book, instead of chatting with my mom, like we did last year.
The kids played hard on the playground, and the dads carried their little ones around on their shoulders, weaving in and out of trees as they went. There were moms wiping dirty faces with wet wipes, and moms laying out food on quilts on the ground. The music was good, and while the sun was hot and it was 95 degrees, in the shade and the breeze, it was a fine summer day.
I hope next year that my mom can be here, or maybe by then I’ll have made some friends that would love to enjoy the afternoon with me at such an event. I think I probably missed that most of all.
