Confessions of a Former Baton Twirler (Got Your Attention, No?)

It occurs to me now, on the eve of the Fourth of July, that this used to be a pretty big holiday for me. When I was a kid, we had traditions for this day as well-established and consistent as those for Thanksgiving and Christmas. At noon, we would join what felt like the rest of the town for the parade. There were a few years when I was actually in the parade, once--and I have not thought about this in a solid thirty years--as a baton twirler. That's something that nobody I know now knows about me: that when I was in first grade I knew how to twirl a baton.

Then, after the local Bluebird troops had marched (I was one of those too) down the old Boston Post Road with the Rotary Club, the Town Selectman, and so on, we would meet up at the centrally located home of some good family friends for a post-parade get-together. After that, to my grandparents' house, to the pool, to convene with our cousins for a cook-out. And finally, to fireworks, always fireworks: sitting on a hill with some assortment of friends or relatives for a display set off by the local fire department.

It was a day I looked forward to, a real holiday, a celebration. One year I rode on an antique fire truck in the parade with a bunch of my friends. Another year my aunt sold silk-screened T-shirts she'd made at the fair in the park on the parade route. I still have two of these: Lily and Annika will wear them tomorrow. Hot dogs on the lawn of the First Parish Church, running for candy thrown by the teenagers on the lumber company's extravagant float, s'mores at dusk with my cousin Andy, and the climactic and yet definitively final event of the day: lying on the grass with my hands behind my head looking up at the black clear sky, waiting for the first burst of light.

When did I stop caring about the Fourth of July? In college? I can't remember. The truth is, I am even a teeny bit patriotic. Okay, more than that. In fact, although I occasionally become disgusted with a wide variety of government officials and policies and threaten to move to France, I am also the granddaughter of three immigrants who came here under fairly desperate circumstances and seemed grateful for the opportunity until the day that they died. I think as a child, my now sort of embarassing patriotism was linked to the Fourth in my mind; in other words, it wasn't just about the hot dogs and the parade.

Is the Fourth of July a kids' holiday? Lily doesn't seem too into it, but then again, I have given her no traditions or sense of meaning for the day. Ought I start? I don't know. It seems somehow exhausting and artifical to start making a big fuss, for a number of reasons. I think I will explain to her tomorrow that we are celebrating the birth of the country in as simple a way as I can, and see what she has to say about that.


This feels super boring to me. I apologize. I will be back to the nitty gritty work tomorrow. I'm feeling it a little bit, though, writing this. Happy Fourth of July.