Goldblum, Pullman, Smith

I romanticized the Fourth Of July for all of its firework fun and barbecues in no small part because it was holiday I always felt I’d missed out on.

I remember going to some firework displays as a kid, but my parents weren’t particularly social creatures, so there weren’t parties to go to, and I recall watching fireworks televised from New York City as much as seeing them in real life. A lot of bits and pieces from childhood were like that, growing up with parents from the city who were raising in a much smaller city—an out-and-out small town from their perspective. I had my friends as a teenager and I think I must have seen fireworks with them at some point, but don’t remember much of that, either.

Then there were my adult years. Summers from the ages of 18 to 33 belonged to my camp job, which prided itself on remaining operational though Independence Day. Those years I spent on site, I was typically campus bound, or at least couldn’t wander far. And those years when I was working full time and mostly remotely, I was always haunted by my on-call phone, and the knowledge that any background noise of revelry would only make it harder to hear when Murphy’s Law came calling.

Through these years, there was one constant. Independence Day—the movie.

I didn’t see Independence Day in the theater, and though the film is inextricably linked to summer in my mind, I’m not actually sure that I saw it on VHS the following summer, let alone on the Fourth of July itself. Still, it was a film that we screened at camp more than once on the holiday, and I recall a search of local video stores in 2008 to buy my very own (DVD) copy.

I’ve watched it every Independence Day since.

The film hasn’t aged all that well. The once stunning special effects are largely quaint by contemporary standards, each of Jeff Goldblum’s didactic demonstrations on chessboards and in airplane hangars feel terribly contrived, and Bill Pullman’s dialogue—even the iconic speech to the international resistance corps—feels awfully stilted. Will Smith gives the best performance, but even his enthusiastic trash talking of alien foes feels a lot like of a caricature watching it today.

And yet.

Independence Day remains one of those films from youth that, like so many Christmas movies and fantasies and favorites from up to a certain point in my life, can cause me to suspend disbelief and judgment, if just for two hours. In Goldblum, Pullman, and Smith I find a comfort food no less quenching than fresh-cut watermelon, no less Americana than hot dogs and cold beer.

And now we have Riley.

I had romantic visions of my first summer away from camp and kicking back to watch fireworks and partake in all of the holiday grandeur. But it turns out babies ought to be asleep before it’s fully dark out at that time of year, not to mention that fireworks can make it difficult for them to sleep, and in greater need of a good cuddle to remain calm from all of the fireworks' booming noise.

So, that first Independence Day back in the world, we went to an afternoon potluck, but after nightfall I held my son close to my chest. While the sky exploded outside, and while he slept, I watched aliens destroy major cities, Will Smith punch one in the head and say, “Welcome to earth,” and the world come together against a common foe. Just the way my teenage self had imagined it. Just the way the world once was.