| | Or fifth, if you want to get technical about it. But all the festivities yesterday were postponed due to rain, so today is our Fourth. Anyway, I was reminiscing with a friend of mine about past Fourth of July celebrations, and that got me thinking. The cool thing about the Fourth, at least for me, is that we have no established traditions for the holiday, which means that I usually end up doing something different every year. There are pros and cons to this, of course, but the best part of not having any traditions is that, unlike Christmases, which tend to be the same and run together in my memory, the Fourth ends up being unique every year. Sitting here, I can recall each of the last seven Fourths; I did something distinctly different on each one.
This particular Fourth, Caleb's first, will not go down as memorable for any reason except it rained, nonstop, all day, so the parade and fireworks were postponed, and we ended up going to the mall to spend a Baby Gap gift card given to us by one of my cello students' parents. (They don't know me very well. I hate Baby Gap, with a fiery passion, but I did manage to find some cute clothes for Caleb. Only one of them says "Baby Gap" on it anywhere, but it's a green hoodie that will a) look fabulous on him, and b) come in handy for cool-ish fall days), followed by a drive out in the country so Caleb could take a nap, culminating with a four-alarm diaper issue and the resultant change in the parking lot of a Lutheran church in (really) Flatville, Illinois. (Truth in advertising, indeed).
Anyway, the Fourth I was remembering today was 2003, when I spent the day lounging by the pool at my apartment complex with my friend Ben. That evening, I played my final concert with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic (I was a month away from moving to Illinois, ironically enough), and spent the entire two-hour patriotic extravaganza dodging June bugs. I managed to, in a feat of uncharacteristic athletic ability, whack one with my bow and send it four rows into the audience. Bugs are, without a doubt, the most terrifying things known to man, and it took several beers with Ben at the dive-iest dive bar I've ever seen to get me back to normal. Such as it is.
My most memorable Fourth, however, was in 2002. My childhood best friend/sweetheart/whatever you want to call it, who moved to Seattle when we were third-graders, was in Kansas to visit some relatives, and asked if I wanted to come out to their farm for a visit. (Did I ever!) Michael and I spent a blissful (although scorching) day riding four-wheelers, tormenting the cows, getting up close and personal with these adorably fluffy white chickens, eating wild turkey and drinking a fabulous bottle of Riesling Michael had brought back from Germany, and shooting off spectacularly illegal fireworks. In short, it was one of the most perfect days I've ever spent with anyone, and it was awesome to reconnect with someone I hadn't seen for 15 years (save for a brief visit the year before). It takes a special friendship to be able to pick up where you left off after over a decade apart, but we managed it. It was simply fantastic.
I'm eternally grateful that I went that night, because that turned out to be the last time I ever saw him. Michael was a First Lieutenant in the US Army, and, a little less than two years later, he was killed in Iraq in what essentially amounted to a traffic accident. His platoon had just finished up their tour of duty and was on their way home. He said before he left that he wanted all his men to come back safe; he was the only one who didn't.
People like Michael are why we have the freedoms we have in this country, and on this day, I'm grateful for his sacrifice and that of countless others like him. For this very personal reason, no matter what I end up doing on the Fourth or what traditions we eventually establish, I will always think of him on this day. |
