1. When I was a kid, the Fourth of July was both fun and funny. For many years, our family partied at Rose Lake on the 4th and messing around with other kids was fun, as was getting in the water and enjoying the spread of food. The adults were funny. They spent the day drinking and eating and laughing and often making me laugh.
Our Fourth of July party today was much more in keeping with how Christy, Carol, and I have grown into adulthood. The get together in Carol and Paul's backyard featured some wine and a few beers. We had great food -- brats, hot dogs, pasta salad, grilled vegetables, chips, and rhubarb pie. Multiple conversations bubbled up around the tables. Carol recounted hers, Paul's, Zoe's, and Jason's moonlight bicycle ride on the Hiawatha trail the night before. The entire party was much mellower than the more raucous parties nearly 60 years ago at Rose Lake.
2. Tracy and I talked seriously for quite a while about what she works to accomplish to improve systems in the world of education and how I've tried to move my life of the mind away from what being an educator required of me and toward enjoyment having nothing to do with teaching and little to do with analysis and interpretation. I loved every day I worked as an English instructor, but once I retired, I was done with institutional thinking and learning and have tried not to live according to the adage, "once a teacher, always a teacher". Now I follow my curiosity and look for ways to be moved in different ways by the books I read and the movies I watch and the music I listen to.
This all led to Tracy, Christy, and me talking about retirement. We discussed how, yes, some people retire and then don't know what to do with themselves and how neither Christy nor I experienced this -- each in our own ways, our days of retirement have been fulfilling and our lives are much more self-defined rather than, as they used to be, defined by our profession.
3. I left the 4th of July family party around 6:30 or so. Debbie had already come home. Josh, Adrienne, and Ellie came home not long after I did. Jack stayed at the party, eager to enjoy the safe and sane fireworks Paul would be lighting, the more spectacular fireworks of people in the neighborhood, and the climactic fireworks display at the Silver Mountain resort.
I volunteered to return to Paul and Carol's after the fireworks were over and bring Jack home, no matter how late.
I waited for the noise and bursts of color to end by diving into the NYTimes Crossword archives and working one puzzle after another. I relaxed, spent much needed time alone, and felt confident that Luna and Copper would endure all the noise just fine. I knew Gibbs has a history of being unaffected by fireworks.
At some point close to 10:45, our front door swung open and in strolled Jack!
Someone over at Carol and Paul's brought him back home. I would have been happy to pick him up, but was also grateful that I didn't have to leave the house and was especially happy that Jack had a fun time at the party with a bunch of people he barely knows and without his mom and dad or Debbie or me being present.
In other words, the night ended perfectly.
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