It’s been ten months since we arrived in Austin. A quick recap of some key events:
- We moved halfway across the country for a lifestyle change.
- We knew practically no one when we moved here.
- Within months of moving here the company I worked for for almost nine years closed and I needed to figure out what to do to pay my bills.
Because of those events, there have been days – even a couple weeks here and there – when I’ve felt unsettled. But I’ve yet to feel homesick.
Homesick: experiencing a longing for one’s home during a period of absence from it.
On July 4th, I was homesick.
I’ve spent almost every July 4th in Narragansett, Rhode Island with family and friends. When I was a kid, the beach club we belonged to hosted what I remember as being a massive firework display. That memory is probably inaccurate considering my most post-childhood firework display experience, but remembering it incorrectly doesn’t do much harm so I’m going to stick with my story…maybe it just seemed larger-than-life because of the way the sound reverberated through the cove…or because I was eight.
Anyway, the Fourth of July was always surrounded by a lot of hype. The beach was packed with members and their guests. Tables in front the cabanas overflowed with smorgasbords, including strip pizza. At dusk, the grills came out and the band that would entertain our parents while we roamed the boardwalks playing manhunt started their set. Everyone would stop to ooh and ahh the explosive display over the ocean, then go back to celebrating our independence and good fortune.
When I was older and working at the beach club, the Fourth of July was memorable for entirely different reasons. I worked at the gate checking passes, ruling over the parking lot and admittance to the club as a righteous, idealistic teenager. I felt it was my job to protect the members paying their annual dues from those who were looking to skirt the system. During those years, Fourth of July weekend became a bonding experience with my fellow gatekeepers. The asphalt radiated heat, burning people’s patience and elevating their sense of entitlement. Throughout the weekend each member of the gate staff would be yelled at because there was a line to get in, guest passes couldn’t be found, or the parking lot was closed. As paying members of the club arriving to find the parking lot filled to capacity, their anger and frustration weren’t unwarranted. And while we had the power to deny their car entry, we didn’t have the power to offer an alternative solution to poor planning.
The highlight of those teenage holiday weekends wasn’t watching fireworks, but hanging with friends after the chaos of the workday. Making it through the day without yelling at a member was celebrated with beers in the dunes, or in the pit after the club had closed and the last garbage cans emptied in preparation for the next day.
My husband jokes that my father and brother have a tendency to say, “Summer is over,” immediately after the Fourth. When you’re a teenager – or at least for me since I loved my summer life – it sort of felt like that. Even though the bulk of summer was left to be experienced, the Fourth of July always felt like the beginning of the end. The remaining July weekends would see dwindling crowds. And by August families started focusing on getting back to their normal lives, with sports practices and back to school shopping.
In college and throughout my twenties the Fourth of July weekend was filled with family and friends. There were games of cornhole on the beach, and BBQs with family that included little neck clams courtesy of my Uncle. I hated leaving my friends at the beach for a few hours to go to my family BBQ, but I always enjoyed sitting on our deck catching up with my mom’s side of the family.
The first time my husband (then boyfriend) spent Fourth of July weekend with my family and me our dog decided to swipe my discarded tampon from the garbage and proudly carry it onto the deck for everyone to see. C noticed it immediately and attempted to discreetly grab it to spare me some embarrassment. Unfortunately, most of my extended family already saw our dog’s find, but all acknowledged that C’s unflinching effort showed he was a keeper.
In my thirties, Fourth of July weekends involved a lot less partying. Being more mindful of the aging process, I no longer wanted to spend hours baking in the sun. Day-drinking made me tired, and it took more than a Gatorade and breakfast sandwich to recover from a hangover. I looked forward to leaving the beach to spend time with my Aunts and Uncles, and didn’t feel like I was missing out on a great story if I wasn’t in the pit at the beach club. Fourth of July weekend was simply enjoying time with my favorite people, in one of my favorite places in the world. In fact, last year we were able to celebrate my nephew’s first birthday which was special.
While we’ve been making friends in Austin, and spent Sunday and Monday with some of them, we didn’t do anything other than recover from a hangover on the actual Fourth. And while it probably would have been a quiet Fourth of July if we had been in Rhode Island, waking up in my family’s tiny beach house and being able to put my toes in the sand would have made it better. Throughout the weekend I imagine we would have had drinks at the Coast Guard House. Maybe taken a ride to Newport. Spent more time than necessary with family and friends, and watched our nephews experience the beach. I doubt we would have created any specific memories, but we would have been with people we love in a place that is special to us.
*Photo of me with two of my best friends in the pit taken approximately ten years ago.