4th of July Paintings by Kyle and Owen, painted this morningOwen’s, on left, titled: “Fireworks, 4th of July Concert, and Moon” (important notes from the artist: yellow moon at top left, green grass at bottom, big and little fireworks all around)
Kyle’s, on right, titled: “Fireworks All The Way To God” (important notes from the artist: big fireworks shooting right off the top of the paper, dark green grass along bottom, instruments — violin, trumpet, and trombone — just above grass on left side)
A lot of what I’m thinking about this 4th of July are the same things I was thinking about last 4th of July (click here for a post of mine from a year ago). The big difference this year is that Meera Grace is with us. As a tiny 5 week old baby, she is already so incredibly extravagantly privileged in so many, many ways. Just one of those ways is that she was born with automatic U.S. citizenship. Braydon and I both just had to laugh when, as easy as pie (American Pie; pun intended) Meera’s Social Security card, with brand new Social Security number printed right on it in fresh ink under her name, arrived in the mail a couple of weeks after she was born. It just arrived in the mail. Do you know how hard we had to work (how many hours and hours and hours were spent; how much frustration we experienced; how many phone calls we made; how many visits to the Social Security office we made; etc…) to get Social Security cards for Kyle and Owen??? Any adoptive parent knows how hard that process was (especially if you adopted from a place like Haiti where immigration has its… let’s just say… ‘issues’). Meera, like most of us born to privilege, doesn’t have a clue how very fortunate she is. She is unaware of the privileges she is cloaked with. She has no idea what a privilege it is to be a U.S. citizen, what a privilege it is to simply receive her Social Security card in the mailbox. The privilege — the unearned advantage — is invisible to her. As it is to most all of us who have it. Over the years, as we teach her –as best we can– to recognize her privileges, including the privilege of having been born here, our hope is that she’ll navigate privilege’s slippery slope with compassion and grace. We are living a life of plenty. What a slippery slope it is. Over the next few days, as we indulge in some of the luxuries that our life as we know it affords us, we will be remembering what a privilege it all is. Yes, that’s right, as we picnic and swim and barbecue and watch the fireworks we’ll be remembering just how unearned most of our advantages really are.