INTERDEPENDENCE DAY
In the later years of his long life, before his memory blurred, my father would routinely celebrate July 4th of 1949 aloud. That was the day, he would remind me in a gleeful uncharacteristically raised voice, he met the love of his life. Pressed for details, he would recall a Brooklyn boy, just three years removed from braving his way with the Fighting 69th Infantry from France through Germany to the Elbe River meetup with the Russian Army. Sneaking into a Macy’s Store Workers Union Independence Day dance at the Hotel New Yorker that evening, he met my mother to be. Mom was a shy Polish immigrant the same three years out of Europe, from years of displacement in a Siberian forced labor camp all the way to joyous employment in Ladies Sportswear at the Herald Square flagship store. The Flatbush boy and the Polish girl would begin 65 years of codependence, very proud Americans leaning on each other always to gamely try to soothe vivid memories of hunger, fear and death.
They needed each other and so do we, all of us.
This is the 245th birthday of our nation, celebrated from sea to shining sea in an extended weekend of beaches, grilling, music, parades, and fireworks. It is a day we recall those courageous, brilliant and usually squabbling forebears who managed to come together for one purpose, departing English rule, crafting a forever memorable document in the Declaration of Independence to set their course. All of it is, and always will be, worth celebrating daily.
Yet at the beginning of this third decade of a century dominated by global terrorism, never ending foreign wars, climate crises, political polarization and literal and figurative wall construction, an actual insurrection at our nation’s capital, record levels of global inequality and international debt, falsehoods, and racial and religious hatred, perhaps it is also time to celebrate interdependence, and a declaration to that effect. We just cannot make it alone, not America first in the world, and not financial and ruling elites who seek refuge and status behind well-guarded gates and on islands and other planets. We need each other and the pandemic should have made that more obvious than ever before. We need schools, medicine, clean water, clean air, good jobs, safe roads, healthy food, safety nets, smart policy, and we need them throughout this nation and the world, and we need them now. Interdependence. It worked for my folks. The person leaning your way today will be someone you can lean on tomorrow. Depend on it.
