The perfect July 4th for our time

Bad weather cancelled -- not postponed -- the parade

As we ran around the house slamming windows shut just before nightfall on Thursday, a fierce wind was blowing doors shut and then flinging them open.

The accompanying deluge lasted a half hour or so, but the rain was ongoing when we decided – he, a retired firefighter, me, a native of Tornado Alley — to walk around and survey the damage. We headed down the hill and found a friend who lives in a Main Street apartment out doing the same. A tree that had been leaning toward his apartment was down and just across the street, a towering tree I don’t know the name of had split in half.

Our friend’s tree made the local news.

At least, I told our friend, he no longer had to worry about that tree falling into his bedroom. He’d taken to sleeping away from the window on windy nights out of a fear of being crushed.

He did not laugh. He’s the nervous type.

The sirens hadn’t started yet and the town — most of which lost power — was weirdly quiet. The generators hadn’t started, nor had the chain saws.

We didn’t lose power and were nearly giddy with our good fortune. The storm dropped a smallish branch into the backyard. I’d been trying to rope-saw the thing the day before but gave up in disgust.

What I couldn’t finish, God did, I guess. Thanks, God!

The next day was gorgeous. The rain washed the air clean and the sun was bright when a few of us walked to the village center, ready to cheer on our town’s goofy July 4th parade.

But even those of us who had power didn’t have the internet, so we missed the notice sent out by the town that the parade was off. A handful of us stood chatting until we realized there would be no kids on decorated bikes, and no fife and drum corps. Someone made a joke that we should take it upon ourselves to march down the middle of the street and chant, “USA! USA!” The last time I heard someone chanting “USA!” was after the House Republicans passed the big ugly bill after days and days promises that they would never do so.

So thank you, but no. No one stepped into the street. We wished one another well, and went home.

To be honest, I’d walked down to the parade out of a sense of duty. I love my country but what precisely am I celebrating this year?

• Though many individual members of the U.S. House and Senate expressed distaste for the diapered felon who rapes’ signature tax bill, they held their noses and voted for it, anyway. They ignored their constituents and they ignored the experts who told us the results will be disastrous.

• The conservative majority on the Supreme Court has handed a series of victories to the would-be king.

• Steps we’ve taken to address civil disparities have been erased, as have steps we’ve taken to battle climate change.

• I’ve listened to Republican leaders speak in D.C. and we are not of the same species. And they are in power.

In that sense, I was fine with the parade being cancelled. Not postponed. Cancelled. “See you next year!” a nearby electronic traffic sign chirped. Well, OK, then.

I live in the factory end of a wealthy town. ICE hasn’t yet been a presence here in part because — and this is a critical point — like so many small towns in this state, this is a mostly-white enclave. In implementing this administration’s human trafficking operation, ICE is looking for brown people so they haven’t been a presence here yet, though with their quotas, who’s to say?

For. now, we who live here could pretend all of this isn’t happening, and that is by design, isn’t it? We don’t live in a gated community but Connecticut’s historic segregation (we’re called the Mississippi of the North) means we can continue to host our cook-outs and march in our parades and wave our flags and pretend all this (whatever this is to you) is happening somewhere else to people we don’t know and it’s a shame and all but.

But most of us weren’t raised that way. We were raised to think in terms of community. Thursday’s storm toppled some trees but left others standing. Some yards were decimated. Others not so much, and that might lull some of us into thinking we are charmed or blessed strictly because our good luck allowed us to escape the storm this time.

This time.

But the storm is right now destroying livelihoods and families. People illegally held in the custody of this administration have died. They’ve been tortured. That those people are not family by blood means nothing. The only world I want to live in is one where that destruction and anguish means something to all of us. It’s personal.