It’s Independence Day, and I’m thinking about fireworks, the kind that exploded into the sky over Slane Castle on a summer evening in 1985 when  Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were making their Irish debut. Close to 100,000 of us made the pilgrimage through the sleepy – and disapproving – village of Slane to see The Boss. Between assurances of increased security and a promise – as yet unfulfilled – that this would be the last rock concert to disturb them, the residents had been placated. Even the weather cooperated with the kind of sun-drenched day the Irish pray for. Everybody was young that day, even the crotchety old farmers who let us park on their fields. When the band burst on stage with Born in the USA, everybody was Irish, even Bruce who turned his baseball cap backwards and bragged, “I had a grandmother from here.”

We basked in his pride, denying for a few hours the reality that our weather was rarely that sunny, and that many of us would be forced out of Ireland as economic immigrants, collectively the “brain drain” of the 1980s. But on that glorious day, in spite of the economic and political truths of Ireland, and the ever-diminishing possibilities before us, a defiant Springsteen held us aloft, and we all believed in America.

I was introduced to Bruce Springsteen and “The River” when I was just 17.  I bought the record and played it until I had memorized every song. Mr. Jones, my English teacher, was responsible, sensing that the plainspoken poetry of The Boss would appeal to my blue-collar sensibilities. He knew I had never seen a Cadillac or a State Trooper – most likely he hadn’t either –  and that I wouldn’t know the difference between a highway and the motorway. I had never heard a screen door slam or the crack of a baseball bat. But he knew I knew  disappointment.  I knew about the dole and diminished opportunities all around us. I knew pregnant girls whose boyfriends married them. Derry Girls were just like Jersey Girls. I knew men who worked at the factory, and when the factory stopped working, they did too, and I knew they would never be the same. I knew the drizzle of rain and small-town life  in a tiny troubled country on the other side of the Atlantic. I knew young people were leaving that life and that I would too. The Boss personified the American Dream – our American Dream.

When Bruce Springsteen revisited “The River” on a Thursday night in Phoenix, Arizona,  over three decades later, flashes of my teenage self resurfaced, a little tougher, and wiser maybe, hardened by the beginnings and endings that make up a full life –  the marriage, the mortgage, the raising of a good person, the career, the cancer, the death of the man who had for so many years quickened my heart, the worry about what might come next and the waiting – always the waiting – for the other shoe to drop. In the middle of my life, it occurred to me that my parents – the people I fought so hard at 17 – were once in the middle of theirs with beautiful dreams that were dashed like some of mine. I know now the darkness that sometimes  got the best of us . . .

Papa now I know the things you wanted that you could not say . . . I swear I never meant to take those things away

From the cheap seats, I listened to Springsteen tell  the stories that made up the story of my dead husband’s life. The one about not being drafted to Vietnam because he was the only surviving son of a man who died in military service; the one about how he cut his hippie hair when his buddies didn’t come back; and, the one about trading in his beloved motorcycle and the muscle car to settle  down when he and his girl were just too young. To settle. On they went, for 27 odd years, each of them making compromises and taking care of what became obligations. Then, with a shot of courage one hot Saturday afternoon in a Phoenix parking lot outside a place that could have been  Frankie’s Joint – he showed his cards. All of them. And, in the space of a heartbeat, he turned from that life – because the alternative was like “dying by inches” – to follow instead a heart beating wildly, to follow me.

Cause point blank, bang bang baby you’re dead.

Oh, the price you pay – a young man’s song.

He brought with him the shirt on his back and a shiny Ford Thunderbird. He had the heart – and he had the stomach – for all of it. All of it.  All in. He would drive all night just to buy me some shoes.

For as long as we could be young, we had a great run – born to run – and raised the kind of hell that belongs in a rollicking Springsteen song. It lost much of its luster before he died and, had he lived, we may not have made it. The “in sickness” part of the deal sucked. And that’s the truth.  We were married for one day shy of 22 years, and together we had done something good – really good. Through it all, he was in my corner – always – and any regrets are so small now that they don’t matter. The lesson? Well, it’s about time. It is always about time. We have only so much and not enough to waste to learn how to live and to live well with another person, a partner.

Today, I’m going  back to The River. After 40 years, I’m in the throes of another opportunity to live better and love better – because just like the America we’re celebrating today,  something good was just up the road.  It always is. And, word on the street is that Springsteen will tour again in 2022. I’ll be there. He can count on that.

The River is how you learn the adult life and you choose your partner and you choose your work and that clock starts ticking and you walk alongside not only the people you’ve chosen to live your life with but you walk alongside of your own mortality and you realize you have a limited amount of time to raise your family, to do your job, to try and do something good. That’s ‘The River.’

That’s Independence Day.

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