Of Thee I Sing

I may or may not have gotten totally choked up just now while trying to read this book to my belly. What an inspiring children's book!

I was like, "My baby is so lucky is gets to be an American!"

I never say the popular phrase, "Proud to be an American" because I really don't get how you can be proud of something you didn't earn. If you traveled oceans to get here and worked your butt off to be made a citizen, be as proud as you want. But I didn't help found this country. I didn't choose to live here. I was born here. I didn't earn anything. I just got lucky.

So I will tell you all day how blessed I feel to be an American, how I love to be an American, but not that I'm proud to be an American. Just doesn't sit right with me. Plus the whole concept of pride makes me uncomfortable on numerous levels, but that's not for this post.

So much is imperfect, but that's with any nation. I'm so thankful my baby will have freedom of speech. I'm so thankful he or she will walk down the street and be relatively safe from a war attack, unlike many children in Israel or Palestine. I'm so thankful a Black president won't be anything to blink at for my baby, nothing to be as excited as I am about it. It will just be a given, like when I was little and it was like, "Why not have women vote?" Why not have a Black president? I'm so thankful for my baby's sake that it already happened. I'm just feeling thankful. Darn book got me all choked up.