peevish mama

Or as I like to say, Happy Cojones Day.  Our founding fathers had some big balls.  Seriously.  Although I took AP history with Sister Whalen, a nearly deaf, bewhiskered nun with a tremulous voice, I failed to appreciate at the tender age of seventeen, exactly what it meant to declare independence from Britain.  How scary could the British have been, with their bad food, bad teeth and dry wit?  Surely, they looked like pansies in their bright red uniforms, marching in stiff lines and columns.  Not very creative.  Not very scrappy.  I hated American history and spent my time making high humming noises causing Sister Whalen to fuss around with her hearing aid in a futile effort to correct the frequency.  

Then last summer a friend invited me to the Guthrie to see a show and I said YES OF COURSE! and then she sent me the link to the play and when I read that it was a musical about the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I groaned and resigned myself to a long night of torturous male a cappella zaniness (albeit in the company of fabulous women).  If I had had to concoct a play I was less interested in seeing, I would have been hard pressed.  I hate musicals (except for Annie and Grease).  As it turns out, it was phenomenal.  1776 was brilliant.  It was edifying, funny, romantic, smart.  I LOVED it and had an epiphany – American history is actually kind of cool!  Kind of really cool!  It’s not about memorizing all the presidents in order.  It is about ideas and ideals, about creating something new – a new baby country!  Heady indeed.

And it has taken the beautifully done HBO miniseries, John Adams, to really bring to life for me what was at stake – what those guys sacrificed and put on the line for what they believed was the right course for the colonies.  Doctor Dash and I haven’t finished watching, but are enthralled with Paul Giamatti’s portrayal of a taciturn, idealistic and often socially and politically clumsy John Adams.  Now there’s a hero.  And Laura Linney – a gorgeously transparent actress, the woman behind the man, such a smart, intuitive, steadfast and calming partner for those trying times.  Putting Hollywood aside for a moment (which is hard for me), the series shows the struggles both internal (with one’s conscience and with the delegates of other colonies) and external (our poorly equipped farm boys against the British forces).  It shows the backbreaking toil involved in the war effort on everyone’s part – man, woman and child, and the solemn deliberation and heated debate that preceded even deciding to take the precipitous step of declaring independence.  These people put their lives on the line.  They were committing treason, punishable by death.  It really is incredible when you stop to think about it.

Doctor Dash and I asked ourselves: would we have had the courage?

And the document, the Declaration of Independence, is so thoughtful and momentous, penned mostly by Thomas Jefferson.  Oh what beautiful words . . . Oh, Tommie . . .  Who knew he was such a tall, handsome, debonaire wordsmith?  Sister Whalen certainly never told us.  Maybe we would have paid more attention had we known.   The Declaration of Independence is perfectly imperfect, poetically flawed by compromise and deliberate omissions in order to reach a greater good, a new state of being.  The issue of slavery had to be shelved in order to get the document ratified.  It took nearly ninety more years and a bloody civil war for the repercussions of that concession to play itself out (arguably, still a rolling stone).  Many of them, Jefferson included, fully apprehended the danger and hypocrisy inherent in allowing the issue to remain untouched, but such was the struggle . . . mere men, trying to create something better than, inured to, and in the service of mere men.

They were brave our founding fathers – tenacious, intelligent, fine writers and orators, conscious of the weight of responsibility on their shoulders, wary of the power in their hands.  We should be very very proud of how this country started, and today might be a good day to think about how we can recapture that spirit in a way that goes just a little beyond wearing a red visor, red sundress and red sandals.  (OK, I’ll admit it, I was fuming at the two melon ass of a woman stuffed into a red sundress today at the Edina parade for no better reason than it was hot as hell, crowded as hell, and she was just too matchy matchy . . .  my grievance may have been petty, yes, but it was far from unfounded.)  

So Happy Cojones Day – may we all have the balls and fortitude to fight for what we believe in.

P.S. PEEVISH MAMA LOVES OBAMA.