4 de Julio

This may not come as a surprise, but they don’t celebrate the 4th of July in Panama. 

We really like the 4th of July though, and we really still love America, so we decided to celebrate it ourselves. The goal was to make it feel the same for the girls. Every first holiday here feels like a lot of pressure to keep the same traditions that the girls were raised with, and make them feel as “normal” as possible. Birthdays, Christmas, and Thanksgiving were extremely difficult because those ones are so special. I got spun up in my head weeks before those ones actually happened (shed several tears in the days leading up), and then they turned out beautiful and wonderful. They had threads of our old lives woven in with some fun new Panama idiosyncrasies. The 4th of July was less consequential for me. 

Back in the States we would sleep in, have a lazy morning (because we need to rally in the evening), put on our best red-white-and-blue gear, then do something truly American. One year we went to a baseball game and ate hotdogs, yelled at the other team, and sang the national anthem proudly. Years prior, we went to the tiny town my husband grew up in and watched the tractor pull, chicken catching, and of course the “great balls of fire” (which is a 50 gallon drop filled with gasoline, gun powder, and powdered coffee creamer to make them all different colors). 

I say it all the time, but hillbillies are truly gifted when it comes to gun powder and explosions.

Last year drove to liquor stores and fireworks stands in my husband’s Dodge Viper, listening to Toby Keith at max volume. “We’ll put a boot in their ass, it’s the American way.” You know the song. Then we came home and grilled, drank and lit shit on fire (only fireworks were lit on fire).

So this year, the critical things were to have beer, burgers and hotdogs, and fireworks. We decided to invite some of our friends here from other countries to show them a 4th of July celebration. In true Panama fashion, the grocery store was out of lettuce. This is a critical component for a good burger, but *shrug* what can ya do? No lettuce for us. The Panamanians LOVE fireworks, so that one was easy to nail down! 

Except that the firework stand is closed Mondays. 

Oh well, I just hoped that the neighbors would have fireworks. We will save the fireworks for a random Thursday when we want to blow something up (we are acclimating to the culture!) But I did have burgers, dogs, and beer; so that is basically close enough. 

We also had a British guy who wished us, “Happy Traitor’s Day”. We all laughed.

While we didn’t have fireworks, we did have a beach fire. The only neighbors with fireworks were a little too far away to get a good view. The girls ran around with friends and swam until 10pm; and we got to listen to hits like American Pie, Born in the USA, and American Girl while we chatted with our non-American friends on a beach in Panama. 

While it did not feel like the 4th of July does in The States, it did still feel special. I have moments all the time when I need to stop and remember this is my life now, and the 4th of July in Panama was one of those moments. 

I love it here. I love the friends that we’ve made, I love that the grocery store is just out of things fairly often, I love that the girls get to embrace childhood worry-free. While I still love America very much, Panama is becoming home and celebrating holidays here allows us to make new traditions as a family. 

I got a shirt in Thailand years ago, and it says this:

Same Same. But Different. 

And that’s how holidays here feel.