57 Days In - Celebrating Independence from Us

The Holiday weekend is now well and truly over and a reminder that everyone is back to work hums and bangs away in the distance - a constant echo of perpetual renovations being made on at least 5% of the community’s properties. What economic crisis?

Unfortunately July 4th (as they say it here) was not as sociable a time as we had hoped - for us, anyway.

Early Saturday morning we scrabble out the door, beckoned by the short pips of a Fire Engine - which rolls past, topped with small children sparkling red, white and blue, almost leaving behind a surprisingly large wave of scooters, skateboards and the obligatory golf-buggies (one jolly gent rigged up speakers that blasted Police Academy music from his). We are in high spirits now, partly due to the ridiculousness of it all, partly because high spirits are infectious.

Inspired by smiles and waves, we head - a few minutes behind - for the beach-club, and expected refreshments / the-finding-of-friends. But standing in an empty bar we can only be disappointed as dribs and drabs of the parade wend their way towards us, then pass us to take up chairs on the beach. The parade went a different way. We return home, still friendless.

After having taken their little Californian boys back to Blighty for a superior education, Chris’ parents moved back into their Orange County family home January 2009 - some twenty or so years after having left. It transpires that this guarded community has it’s very own “Welcoming Committee”; we’ve all seen Desperate Housewives, when you move house in this country, at lease one person arrives with a basket of muffins, right? For some reason - maybe because they had officially owned the house all along, maybe because it got out that they valued the English education system above all others - there has still been no real American welcome for those at number 68.

So, on the fourth of July, the day when all American’s come together and celebrate their new-found-strength in being independent from us Brits, as we reach the house after a disappointingly lonely morning, the limousine of golf-buggies pulls up and a smiling man leaps down to join us.

“Hi”, he says. “I’d like to introduce myself, I’m your neighbour”.

Belief is restored in the common man, Americans will unite, and the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave…

“I’m gonna be doing some renovating on my house, and it seems the boundaries are actually four feet further into your land. Anyway, we’ll be in contact before the work is due to start”.

Oh.

And it is later on, when watching the distant fireworks, that it strikes me how fitting that meeting actually was. The beach is awash with large family groups, friends talk loudly to each other across the bar, and amidst the cawing and whooping one young boy tries his best sarcasm, shouting “I‘m sorry, is there some kind of celebration happening today?”

And I don’t get it. I don’t get it because for me it is not a celebration. Not a real one, that you grow up with - that you look forward to in the weeks leading up to it - when you are younger because it is exciting, when you are older because it holds memories of that excitement. The fireworks are pretty, the wine tastes good, but there is no buzz, no inner smile, no attachment like the one that I feel on the 5th of November, when cold hands and blazing bonfires carry countless reminders.

This is not a day for people to make friends, this is a day for them to celebrate with the friends they already have, that they have had for a long time. And ours aren’t here.