By Fourth of July was on a Saturday, which meant I didn't have to take off work, which meant I didn't have to lose a day's pay, which is the kind of thing you think about when you're a single mother with three kids and a car that needs AC work and a college fund that grows in increments so small they'd make a banker weep. The holiday fell on a weekend. Free. Thank you, calendar. Thank you, America, for timing your birthday correctly this year.
We went to Lorraine's. This is what we do on the Fourth — what we've always done, as long as I can remember. When I was little it was Lorraine and Danny and Kevin and Amber and me in the backyard of whatever rental we were in, eating hot dogs and watching the neighbors' fireworks because we couldn't afford our own. Danny would drink beer and fall asleep in a lawn chair by nine. Lorraine would sit on the porch and say, "Those fireworks are too close to the house," every forty-five seconds. Kevin would light sparklers and chase me with them. Amber was too little to do anything but sit in Lorraine's lap and cry when it got loud. It was — I don't want to say perfect, because nothing about my childhood was perfect, but it was something. It was ours.
Now it's Lorraine's apartment complex, the courtyard between buildings where the neighbors drag out folding chairs and someone always has a speaker playing too-loud country music and there's a grill that belongs to nobody and everybody. Lorraine made her potato salad — the mustardy kind, with hard-boiled eggs and sweet pickle relish, the recipe she's been making since before I was born and will continue making until they pry the Tupperware from her cold, stubborn hands. I brought hot dogs and burgers and buns and the pasta salad left over from last week, which I stretched with more rotini and dressing because pasta salad is infinitely expandable, which is one of its greatest qualities as a food.
Kevin called from Clarksville. He's got Kaden this week — Kaden is four, and he and Crystal are still working out the custody arrangement, which is messy and sad and makes me angry on Kevin's behalf even though I know there are two sides. Kevin put Kaden on the phone and Kaden said, "Hi Aunt Sawah," and my heart did the thing it does when small children mispronounce my name, which is: completely collapse. Amber called from Chattanooga. She and Darren took the twins — Haley and Madison, five years old, absolute chaos agents — to a lake. She sent a photo of the girls covered in popsicle juice and lake water and pure joy. I put it on the fridge next to Chloe's report card. The fridge is becoming a gallery. The fridge is doing important work.
Chloe had her friend Destiny over, and they sat in Lorraine's living room and watched something on Chloe's phone and emerged only for food, which is the correct use of a fourteen-year-old's time on a holiday. Jayden played basketball with some of the neighborhood kids in the parking lot — actual, joyful, uncomplicated basketball. Running and yelling and trash-talking and laughing. I watched him from the folding chair and thought: he's okay. Right now, in this moment, he's okay. He's an eleven-year-old playing basketball on the Fourth of July and he is okay. I held onto that thought like a receipt I might need later, because fall is coming, and middle school is coming, and I have a feeling in my gut about sixth grade that I can't name yet but it's there, humming. But not today. Today he's okay.
Elijah discovered sparklers. Lorraine held his hand while he held the sparkler, and his face — his whole face — was made of light. Not just reflecting the sparkler but made of it. Six years old and holding fire for the first time and absolutely vibrating with the power of it. He said, "Mama, I'm holding a STAR," and I said, "You are, baby," and Lorraine said, "Hold it away from your body, Elijah," because Lorraine's love language is safety instructions. He wrote his name in the air. E-L-I. He ran out of sparkler before the J-A-H. I lit him another one. He finished his name. He asked if he could write Tony (the stuffed tiger). I said yes. He wrote TONY in fire in the Nashville sky on the Fourth of July, and if that isn't childhood then I don't know what is.
I grilled the burgers myself. I'm not great at grilling — I'm an oven-and-stovetop woman, always have been — but I can cook a burger on a charcoal grill without burning it, which puts me ahead of approximately half the men at the cookout, and I say that with love and also with data. Smash burgers on the grill, American cheese on top, the cheap buns from Aldi, ketchup and mustard and pickles. Lorraine's potato salad on the side. Jayden ate three burgers. Elijah ate the bun and the cheese and nothing else, which — it was yellow cheese on a beige bun, close enough to orange jurisdiction that I'm counting it as a nutritional win.
The fireworks — the real ones, the city ones — we could see from the parking lot. Not perfectly, not like people who go downtown and sit on Broadway, but enough. Enough to see the colors pop above the tree line, enough to hear the boom a second after the light, enough to feel like we're part of something. Elijah sat in my lap. Chloe sat next to Lorraine. Jayden sat on the curb with a leftover sparkler, unlit, just holding it. I looked at my family — my mother, my three kids, the folding chairs and the mustard potato salad and the too-loud neighbor and the smashed paper plates — and I thought about Danny, who used to fall asleep by nine, who left and never came back, who missed all of this. Every cookout. Every sparkler. Every mispronounced name and fridge gallery and burger I learned to grill myself. He missed it. And I didn't. I'm right here. In a folding chair in Antioch with mustard on my shirt and a six-year-old in my lap and fireworks over the tree line and I am right here and I didn't leave and I never will.
Drove home at ten. No AC, all windows down, hot night air. Elijah asleep in his car seat. Jayden quiet in the back. Chloe in the passenger seat, feet on the dashboard, which I tell her not to do every time and she does every time. The Altima rattled over the potholes on Murfreesboro Pike. The dent in the bumper caught the streetlights. One of these days. Everything is one of these days. But today — today was good. Today was a $6.99 pack of hot dogs and Lorraine's potato salad and my son's name written in fire and that is more than enough. That is everything.
Lorraine’s mustard potato salad will always be the star of the cookout — that’s non-negotiable, and I wouldn’t dare try to compete. But when you’re feeding a crowd off a communal grill with folding chairs and paper plates, you want one more thing on the table that travels well, holds up in the heat, and doesn’t require a second mortgage. This Sweet-Sour Lettuce Salad is exactly that: a warm-dressed, bacon-topped classic that’s been showing up at cookouts since before any of us were born, and earns its spot every single time.
Sweet-Sour Lettuce Salad
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 20 minutes | Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 1 large head iceberg or leaf lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces
- 4 strips bacon, chopped
- 3 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
- 3 green onions, thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon water
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
Instructions
- Prep the greens. Tear lettuce into a large serving bowl. Scatter sliced green onions over the top and arrange the hard-boiled egg slices around the edges. Refrigerate while you prepare the dressing.
- Cook the bacon. In a skillet over medium heat, cook the chopped bacon until crispy. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon and set aside, leaving the drippings in the pan.
- Make the dressing. Reduce heat to medium-low. Add the apple cider vinegar, sugar, water, salt, pepper, and dry mustard to the skillet with the bacon drippings. Stir well and cook for 2–3 minutes until the sugar dissolves and the dressing is heated through.
- Dress and serve. Pour the warm dressing over the lettuce immediately before serving — it will wilt the greens slightly, which is the point. Top with the reserved crispy bacon and serve right away.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 110 | Protein: 6g | Fat: 7g | Carbs: 6g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 290mg