For the second year in a row, we attended the Kirkland fireworks show at Marina Park. And for the second year in a row, found it to be an uplifting community experience. As a lifelong Kirklander, I am often — or rather, almost always — the only one of a group that has lived here since growing up.

Last year, when I met a fellow mom at Peter Kirk pool who had graduated from Juanita [High School] around the same time I did, we both found it to be an amazing coincidence. Kind of odd, when you consider we were both in our own hometown. It is sometimes hard to have a strong sense of community in a community which is so largely made up of transplants to the area. However, as I sat at Marina Park on Saturday in the sweltering heat with several thousand of my neighbors, I realized what a privilege it is to live in a community of people who are here because they chose to be, not because they were born here — which, if you think about it, is the story of America.

Before heading to the park, we stopped at Alanya Café for some dinner. The food was truly amazing, and the proprietors were sweet, friendly people, bringing exquisite Turkish cuisine to fortunate Kirkland residents — a true example of the American dream.

As we sat in the park, I noticed that it was difficult to count the various ethnic groups represented or the number of languages spoken. Another thing that struck me was the number of bi-racial couples. When I was a kid growing up in Kirkland, I knew several bi-racial families — and yet, there were certain unwritten taboos, such as Asian men with white women, black women with white men, etc. And yet, each of those former taboos were represented at Marina Park on Saturday. And children resulting from these multi-ethnic unions abounded. In a couple of generations, I thought, there will be no such thing as classifying people by race. We will simply be Americans, and will come in a variety of shades.

While I enjoyed the beauty of our wonderfully diverse community, I overheard something which truly sickened me. I was not in a position, in the thick crowd, to see the speaker but I heard someone (who I surmise to have been Caucasian) say, “This is America, right?” And someone else replied, “Yeah…” The first speaker said, “Then why are we a f***ing minority in our own country?”

I will not even attempt to address the myriad of things wrong with this statement — and I assume, hope actually, that most readers of the Reporter will have the same repulsed reaction I did. My initial thought was to tell this person to crawl back into whatever hole they crawled out of. But then I realized I would be perpetuating the same hate they were. Instead, I pray for forgiveness, and that these people will learn love and understanding. And I take comfort that they are, indeed, the minority in this community — if not racially speaking, at least of opinion.

Elizabeth Samse, Kirkland