July Fourth. This has always been my favorite holiday. For starters, it has none of the drama associated with the big family events of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. (And let’s not even discuss the infamous Elf.)

I don’t have to go crazy trying to get the kids outfitted in some crazy costume like we do for Halloween. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate the somber connotations of Memorial Day and Labor Day and they no longer feel like days that should be celebrated, rather they are days that should be commemorated. So, July Fourth is left as the quintessential party day, a day to be with friends, eat too much food and then close things out with explosive devices.

There is no required menu. Over the years we’ve had grand cookouts with entirely too much food and we’ve also sat around a campfire roasting hot dogs and melting marshmallows. It was all good. Same things with the fireworks displays: sometimes, we went to a grand community event, gathered together in a stadium or a parking lot, listening to the collective ohhhs and ahhhs, and sometimes, it was just a backyard display with the bargain pack picked up at the tent in the Walmart parking lot.

One of my favorite July Fourths was spent on the lake in the middle of nowhere New York with our friends and the kids ran around on the dock with sparklers.

This year, however, this year I haven’t been looking forward to this day. It’s not that we will be staying home and avoiding large gatherings. We’ve had plenty of low-key, just family celebrations before.

Granted, other than a few firecrackers, this weekend isn’t going to look much different from the past 500 weekends. (OK, maybe it’s only been the last 15 or so, but it feels like it could be 500.) We will certainly take advantage of the three-day weekend to do some extra relaxing and some extra project finishing, but since we have a lot already accomplished, that won’t be as jam packed as other years, which will be a good thing.

This year feels a little heavier. I just don’t feel quite up to celebrating America. Instead, I feel like spending some time truly thinking about what it means to be an American. I’ve spent enough time studying history to know that we’ve had our troubled times in the past.

I’ve struggled and written many a paper about the myth of our heroic Founding Fathers versus the reality of who they were as slave owners and what their views were on women. I’ve been fortunate enough to see evolution in how and what is taught in our history books. I’ve enjoyed seeing my children’s history texts become more inclusive of important people of color. Having Martin Luther King Jr. Day declared a national holiday feels like a step in the right direction.

We’re excited to be able to finally watch “Hamilton” the movie, and I’m proud of the fact that A can understand the significance of having almost every major player played by someone who is not white and we can have a discussion about how a story like “Hamilton” is still relevant today.

He’s also had enough history class to understand the complexities of building a nation on slavery, even though many of those involved knowing slavery was an abomination and would eventually have to be reckoned with, although, I’m not sure many of them expected it to take a war that would tear the country in two. A and I have also had many discussions here of late about the consequences of putting the economy ahead of everything else we know to be the right thing to do. It’s a credit to his history teachers that he can see the pros and the cons and debate them endlessly.

Then, there is the pandemic, and along with it, the Great Mask War of 2020. As a scientist, I have tried to find “the best” data. I have tried to glean factual information from primary sources. I also have a slew of friends who work on the front lines as doctors, nurses and other medical professionals. What it all boils down to for me is that we just don’t know.

We don’t know why it targets some people harder than others. We don’t know why some people can be completely asymptomatic and others in ICU for weeks. We don’t know why some treatments work and others don’t. I find articles here and there about a treatment that seems to work, I find glimmers of hope in declining mortality rates, but at the end of the day, I think there is just too much that is unknown.

For me and my family, the easiest way to deal with the unknown or the questionable is to err on the side of caution. We’re still staying as isolated as we can. We’ve ventured back into a few “normal” activities, but we’re taking as many precautions as we can. I’ve had friends and family become angry with me for avoiding social gatherings or for not allowing my kids to come play. I’ve been ridiculed for wearing my mask, called a sheeple, a snowflake or worse.

For me, at the end of all of this, if it turns out that none of this was necessary, what will I have lost? A few get-togethers, a few less trips to the mall, a few less activities? A small price to pay for being cautious.

These are heavy thoughts to take into a holiday weekend, but I do remain optimistic. The most American of ideals include soldiering on and pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps. Throughout this pandemic, I’ve seen small acts of bravery, and compassion that scream this is what America is really about.

It’s easy to get lost in the noise that seems to be hanging over the nation right now, but when I see the music teacher who has creatively found ways to continue instruction online, or the local pizzeria that goes above and beyond to sanitize and adhere to the Department of Health recommendations and still has my order ready for pickup in 25 minutes, or when I get a card from a friend I haven’t heard from in a while, who “finally” had the time to write, I know that there are still hearts and souls out there who are going to make things OK in the long run.

In country years, 244 years isn’t really that old. In the grand scheme of things, I think it puts us right around those difficult teenage years. Those are not friendly years for most of us, but the lessons that we learn during them are the ones that shape us into the adults we become.

Whether we like it or not, all Americans are in this together, and we need to start appreciating and respecting our differences and growing as we learn about each other, and that may be the most American thing we can do.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.