The Saline Reporter
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
A parade of memories comes every December
PUBLISHED: December 6, 2007
Saturday, along with 1,800 other folks, I marched in the big, shiny annual Saline Holiday Parade.
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The big, shiny, long, windy, icy parade that warms me through and through every year.
This was my fifth year as a parade participant and, as always, it was as thrilling as it was chilling.
I paraded with my daughter's Girl Scout troop for the third year singing and shouting "Merry Christmas" and, this year, "Shop Downtown," to support the troop's theme of "City AND Country are what make Saline great."
Aren't they clever?
Participating in the parade and building the float (and I use the term, "building" loosely, since super-dad Bill Downer does most of the work) is the girls' favorite activity all year long.
They love working during the evenings preceding the parade in a cold garage, banding together with a common creative goal.
They love yelling to their pals and neighbors from the float along the parade route -- as fifth-graders, this year boys were pointed out first.
For these girls, and the hundreds of little angels, elves and fairies dancing down the middle of Michigan Avenue in the December chill, the parade is as big as the North Pole, as shiny as Rudolph's red nose and as magical as Christmas morning.
It is for me, too.
Two years ago, while jogging along the curb of Michigan Avenue handing out fliers about Saline Katrina Relief, a grassroots effort to build a Habitat for Humanity house, my tears froze on my cheeks.
My husband and brother were building a doghouse together on the float, signifying the community-build process and promoting the doghouse auction fund-raiser under way. My late father was active with his Habitat for Humanity chapter and it was this memory that prompted me to get involved. I felt his presence, urging me on, "That's it, Sis. Come on now, keep smiling, you can do it."
Think about all the parades you've watched and those, if you're lucky, you've marched in. Those are sweet, all-American memories.
As a young girl, I held tight to my dad's gloved hand along Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit during one Hudson's Thanksgiving Day parade. He'd brought a ladder for us to perch on. It was really cold, but I didn't really care.
I marched next to my foxy middle school crush, Eric Lundin, in one Independence Day parade in Plymouth, holding my breath nearly the entire route.
While living in Hong Kong and working for a magazine, I got to cover the National Flora Festival heritage parade in Kuala Lumpur. Beautiful little brown-eyed children waved from floats made entirely of fresh tropical flowers and made me feel so very welcome.
After returning from living abroad, I attended my first American parade in 13 years and both my husband and I found ourselves nearly balling as the Salem, Mass., high school marching band played the national anthem and cheerleaders pom-pommed their way down the avenue.
Later, I walked with my oldest daughter's Scout troop into a shady, ocean-side historic cemetery in Marblehead, Mass., near where Paul Revere once announced some British were coming.
The Saline parade is an amazing site, whether you're watching from the curb clutching a hot chocolate, charging down the street handing out candy -- or toothbrushes -- or riding on a flatbed bedecked and bejeweled with glitter, posters and twinkle lights.
This year, I wondered again, "How could I be so cold but feel so, well, warm?"
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