“Nothing is more precious than independence and liberty.” ~Ho Chi Minh

Happy 150^th birthday, Canada. I am pleased and proud to call you home.

And happy July 4^th to my American friends, the country of my birth.

Straddling the two nations for twenty years, I have watched the concern for climate increase in one, and decline in the other. I have seen the divide between the cultures widen, the concern for the future grow, the political rhetoric become vitriolic.

As our two countries mark their independence days, I pray for my homeland and its leadership. I pray for peace. And truth. And sanity.

Yet, I am grateful for the fact that I can still drive across a border, unstaffed by military men carrying rifles, to visit my children and extended family in the States.

But I admit to emitting a sigh of relief each time I cross onto Canadian soil.

The paradox: to love one’s birth country even as it becomes a twisted version of itself.

I suspect it is not much different from the way a mother feels whose child has been imprisoned.

Let us never forget the blessings of liberty and freedom.

Hope. It lives, still.