The drought years had burned them to a crisp, but when the rains returned so did the flowers, but not just in the median. The wind and birds and whizzing cars had carried the seeds across the lanes and sowed them into the land on either side of the highway, the bright yellow daisies now a riot of color with the rest of the wildflowers.
Tomorrow is the Fourth of July when we celebrate our belief that to be fully human, we must be free. It is a messy process, this getting and keeping freedom and not unlike the seeds escaping from the median. No matter how hard or long dictators, or despots, armies or the forces of corruption use terror and violence to keep things under control, the natural impulse to fling ourselves out, to risk whatever it takes to grow and be, will not be stopped.
Growing up on the lake, a neighbor across the cove always played marching music on the Fourth ending with the Star Spangled Banner drifting across the water as darkness fell. I remember how good it felt to hear it, like a blessing. Yes,our world is a complicated place, yet somehow we have been able to hold on to our belief in our humanity and what it needs to thrive and deepen, and the seeds from that labor have nourished people everywhere. It seems to me, that may be the best birthday gift of all.
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! O long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
"The Star Spangled Banner, 2nd stanza" Francis Scott Key
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