At what age do certain holidays fail to excite?

I think I am at the age when all of the peripheral holidays are sooo blah. Let’s take this past Fourth of July. I did nada. Nothing. Less than nothing. Maybe because I am here in Texas and my family is 1000 miles away. Friday was a big nonevent. Well my mom did call. She was at home with the family and her boyfriend. Argh!!!!!! My mom has a boyfriend.

Anyway, I remember when I was a kid, I couldn’t wait for holidays especially the Fourth of July. We lived in the ‘hood on the second floor of a two-flat facing west. The neat part about it was the back porch faced east, which is downtown Chicago. Seeing that we lived in what’s now called the Nearwest side (very close vicinity to downtown) and there were no trees in the ghetto we had a clear view of the fireworks show come 9 o’clock.

Me and my other siblings would be soooo happy. My mom would fix us an icecream cone and we would sit outside and enjoy the show.

That’s the funny thing about the hood. There are all of these sweet little secret places and moments that make you think that your time there was the happiest in your life.

The summer before I moved here, I went to the Taste of Chicago with those same siblings. We pushed and were shoved through the million people there. At night we stayed for the fireworks display. The noise was too loud, the crowd to boisterous, and the fireworks were just not the same. I sat on a park bench sinking in mud and remembered the time so long ago when we huddled together, icecream cones melting, watching the red, white, and blue lights explode over the horizon.