The Biggest Family Potluck 7/5/2020

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

It would seem that we are just a handful of years away from being 250 years a nation.  You would really think we would be better at things by now don’t you?  I mean how much practice does a country need to figure things out?  I suppose there are older (definitely) and wiser (probably) nations on this planet that are still fine tuning their goings on. When I started to write this post the term “Americana” kept coming to mind.  I looked it up and it’s a really lovely word that is pretty underwhelming in definition. It simply means: “things associated with the culture and history of America, especially the United States.”  Wow. Thanks dictionary.  I suppose we went with this term since Americany sounded too juvenile?  We just chose another random letter to fluff the end of the word?  Who knows.  Anyway, beyond my English nerd rant there, the term was vague enough of its own accord to require me to think so I suppose I’ll give it that.  What is it about this land?  What is it about these hundreds of millions of people that make the place something like no other on this vast spinning planet? I came to the conclusion that since we have now celebrated the birth of this republic that perhaps I’ll try to, albeit in extraordinarily brief measure (I trust y’all don’t want to have to clear your schedule to read these things), answer these questions.  Just call me a patriot, a wordy, wordy patriot.

If you have long read my writings you know I have a bit of an obsession with creation.  I can go on to the point of exorbitance if you give me the glories of nature to revel in.  I personally don’t see a thing wrong with this. I mean, have you SEEN this world in which we live? How can you look around and not stumble upon something that causes you to audibly gasp and stand with your mouth slightly agape? And this county has any landscape you could possibly wish to immerse yourself in! We are graciously blessed to be the better part of a continent. To the east we have the rolling green Appalachians stretching their endless ridges from the Deep South all the way up the country’s side. These peaks are ancient and one can feel it in the way they appear to be infinite in layers of history and mist. If a bit higher and more rugged is your taste in mountains further west down the entire stretch of the country the Rockies reach high into heavens with snow-capped crests atop their aptly named stone faces. We are endowed with great painted deserts and arid canyons in the southwest while there are wet marshlands and swamps in the southeastern corner. Even the center of our nation is a massive expanse of rolling plains filled with farmland providing food for the majority of the population.  The gamut is very literally run when it comes to the American landscape.  The most discerning tastes could easily find a home site or, at the very least, a vacation spot of their dreams.

I am pleased to say that to some extent we have made an effort to value these natural treasures that we have. We’ve made immense expanses of land protected in parks. I know other countries have parks, but I feel like this nation may be special in just how much space we have to offer in park form. There are huge tracts of land that are untouched by humanity.  It seems to me that unless you’re a citizen of Siberia there are very few flags that fly over quite so much wilderness left in its pure immediately post-creation form. While I may not have seen even a single leaf’s worth of these far reaching wildwoods there is still something majestic and awe inspiring to know within the borders of my very own homeland there are sweeping forests that may be untouched by man other than the past footfall of the occasional native.  I hope we hold on to these great treasures lest we be carried off on the tide of glass and concrete.

It is not just all the magnificent wheres of this nation that rings profound but all the whos.  We call ourselves a melting pot and this is an understatement at best. People from all across the globe come here to call this place home. I daresay there is not one tribe or tongue that isn’t represented somewhere in these states. Now true, the tiny towns like I call home aren’t THAT diverse, I mean I suppose it’s understandable that not a large portion of the global crowd was interested in hay and beef or a mixture of the two wrapped in kudzu, but I know as the population grows of a place so too does the fusion of languages and foods and cultures and beliefs.  It is a beautiful thing. Our people interestingly mirror our little bit of everything landscape and while we all are about as mixed of a bag as you can get, we still somehow manage to all be American. We all have that same desire for this nation to be what so many have held it to be for so many years.

I suppose it’s the deeper things about this country that are really what makes it so great. This great American family spread out over this miscellany of scenery, the who and the where, we are all here for the why.  This nation was founded to “ensure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity”.  We came here or stay here because we know this place offers the life that we most want. Do we get it wrong so terribly often? Yes. Do we all feel differently about what this nation should look exactly like?  Yes.  Don’t most families argue amongst themselves?  Don’t most families have at least a few members that, upon seeing their arrival at the reunion, we know things are about to get significantly more interesting and it could be in the best or worst way possible?  We all have the oddball uncle who will cause a scene or maybe even a not-so-well-known cousin who we really don’t treat as well as we should.  But, is that not what makes it a family?  We have our differences, we don’t all agree and occasionally someone even brings a questionable casserole to a gathering, but overall, we’re family.  What families should want is for the family to do well.  America is an enormous family spread over thousands of miles. This people was founded on freedom and justice. We have often gotten it wrong and messed it up profoundly but upon concluding another anniversary of the founding of this family, I still love it.  I love its mountains and its factory workers. I love its beaches and its farmers. I love its sprawling wilderness and its short order cooks. I love its bustling cities and its kindergarten teachers.  This homeland and its inhabitants offer a little bit of everything, somehow all in shades of red, white and blue.