Yesterday afternoon I drove to the airport to pick up John; my first visit to an airport in several months. I'd nurtured some vain and tiny hope that perhaps reasonability would have prevailed in Huntsville, and that airport security would not have shut down the metered parking.As I pulled around to the front of the airport, I realized two things: one, that metered parking was closed off by a large volume of orange cones, and two, that I'd have to circle around the airport because there was no place to turn off.

The swath of orange cones was disturbing in its own right, but even more so were the three camouflage-colored Humvees guarding them. No one sat in the vehicles, but there were numerous men dressed in camouflage and carrying weapons.

I wish I could say it added to my feeling of security. Quite the opposite, actually.

I circled around, corrected my dumb mistake, and parked in short-term parking on the ground level. I knew John had a couple of bags, so I didn't want to force him to do a lot of walking with them.

As I walked out of the parking area, I looked around. Quiet. Very, very quiet. Almost no one was here. No one, that is, except the guardsmen standing by the doors, laughing and talking with each other.

I could not avoid crossing their path. There was only one door in the direction I was going, and they were standing directly in front of it. So I hooked my thumbs in my pockets as I usually do, and walked on.

It is uncomfortable being stared at, which is what they did to me as I crossed the street and headed toward the door. In return, I decided to be nice. There was no one else around, and it was impossible for me to pretend that I hadn't seen these men. Thus I decided to acknowledge them.

I smiled nicely, bobbed my head in that curiously Southern wordless greeting, and said, "Awfully quiet today," with a smile. At this point I was several feet away and obviously ambling past, but when one of them spoke, it was with an ugly tone of anger and malice:

"Don't start anything."

I hope my puzzlement showed on my face. I walked on and shrugged to myself. Thanks for the protection, I thought sardonically.

Got inside. As I suspected, only ticketed passengers could go to the gates; a charming measure which does little to improve airport security and much to people who would like to chat with family or friends while they're waiting to board a plane.

Huntsville security was once friendly. They smiled at you, once, but not now. I remember when we brought balloons and signs when Kat flew home last year; I have trouble believing they would allow such a display now. Yesterday, they had at least a fifteen-minute wait to get through the metal detectors, and armed men dressed in camouflage glowering close by.

But time passed, and planes arrived, and John came striding down the tunnel, bags and books and water bottle in hand. It made the airport hostility a little easier to stand; here was someone who made it, safely, to his destination.

I told John and Geof not to even make jokes around the security guys, and briefly explained why. We picked up John's bags and went away from the demilitarized zone, back to real life, away from the suspicious, armed men and their military vehicles.

I'd like to think that their suspicion—and perhaps anger?—will serve this country well in the long run. Or that the precautions they're taking now will ensure the safety of the millions of people, like me, who were raised to acknowledge people as you walked past them, and not to pretend that they don't exist.

Instead, I came away feeling like I'd had a brush with a police state. If my experience is typical, no wonder people don't want to fly right now.

I didn't get to bake the blackberry cobbler last night. As Jeff and I joked in the car, last night turned into a demonstration of "Plan B." Phone rings—shows a mobile number. Suspicious, I picked it up. Sure enough, it's Kat and Jess, but instead of "hey we're headed home, wanna get some food?" the message was "HELP! Jess' car died, we're going to the dealership, can you rescue us?"So we hop in the car, run around a deserted car dealership for a while, and eventually find our friends and rescue them. Instead of the baked mini pizzas we'd planned on for dinner, they ended up ordering pizza in for us as thanks for the rescue. Hey, it was a short drive for us, but I think everyone who owns a car knows what it's like to be stranded, and how grateful you are when someone comes to your aid.

Today's technically a holiday—but it seems like we've been doing an awful lot around the house. I sometimes think, though, that we as citizens of this country completely and utterly miss the point of holidays. I'm just as guilty of this as just about everyone else—maybe guiltier because I actually think about this sort of thing, but rarely do much about it.

Over two hundred years ago, a group of otherwise-normal men decided to fight for something they believed in so strongly that they were willing to give their lives to that cause. What they did influences literally every day of our lives. Be realistic—do you have a cause, a belief, a conviction that you are willing to give up everything for? Leave your family and home? Lay down your life in the hopes that perhaps your life—the one thing you hold the most dear—will have a real and palpable difference in the turn of your nation's events? I honestly cannot say that I know of any such men or women.

That is, however, usually the hallmark of truly important points in world history—when the quiet, the ordinary, and the mundane are transformed by necessity into people the world remembers. We remember the ones throughout history who said, "It must be done, and if it must start somewhere, let it start with me."

In celebration and remembrance of lives lost for the sake of ideology, we grill our hamburgers and raise our drinks in toast to mass-produced fireworks. All in honor of men and women not terribly unlike ourselves, with homes and social lives, children and dreams, debts and social pressures, who threw their society into complete and utter turmoil for the promise of something better to come out of that bloodshed.

We don't even think about it—we take our liberties and freedoms for granted much as we take for granted the soil we stand upon. We do not understand the beauty of what we have—the freedom to walk outside without the stain of terror on our souls. We see the neighbor's lawn that isn't mowed as cleanly as our own, the weeds in the garden, the power lines that reduce the value of our property.

We fail to grasp the magnificence of a life led freely, for in that very freedom comes complacence. How can it not? Someone who has spent their entire life under the auspices of free will is not going to wake up every morning and say, "How beautiful it is that I am allowed to live my life as I choose."

But, perhaps, on days like these—a few days set aside each year to remember what has (and has not) come to pass in this world—we will think, reflect, and remember. It's a little much to ask for your friends to pass the enlightenment between the burgers and the beer, but sometimes you gotta wish for what you really need.

Happy holiday to you and yours, and here's to learning from our mistakes every now and then.