Independence Day, July 2025
July 5, 2025
I’ve never been much for fireworks, the Boston Pops on the esplanade, or big statements about patriotism and sacrifice for country.
My dad served; he never spoke about his time and when he did, it was shrouded in mystery and what seemed like tall tales about being dropped in Japan after World War II.
My brother in law served; many of the students are work with are veterans- I always end our conversations with “thank you for your service.” The fact that they are often surprised by my acknowledgement of their sacrifice makes me sad. We need to acknowledge our veterans, with our than appreciation, but health care and support post service.
Because of people before me, I’ve had the luxury of growing up and living in these United States. I know that I will never truly comprehend how fortunate I am to have been born here, to a family with money, white. There is so much I take for granted because I don’t know anything else.
I try to remember everyday all the easy gifts that came to me from birth; I do my best to be mindful that I won a lottery.
In the course of my life, I’ve also had a million moments where I have felt my heart swell with pride at what it means to be an American.
I’ve also experienced a half a million moments where my heart almost burst while I sat, in a comfortable chair, in a small town in New England, and celebrated visions of where our country was headed.
And now, I don’t know what to say, but this glorious nation of ours is failing. Maybe someone will fix things, or maybe we won’t get there in time.
I’ve never been one for parades or blind loyalty but I’ve always had faith, because I don’t know how to wake up in the morning without it.
I’ve been lazy, maybe. Spoiled for sure. There’s so many words- complacent, entitled, blind, hopeful, foolish….
So tonight, I won’t be watching the fireworks. To be honest, I only watched them when the kids were small. And we didn’t talk about the meaning of American’s independence, just when they were going the show was gong to start, and whether the display overhead was the finale.
But, I remember this, and I might be wrong, when I’d hear the music to “this land is your land, this land is my land”- I felt part of a land that was so much bigger than the space between “California and the New York Islands.”
Maybe I heard the song on the fourth of July. Or maybe it was a Springsteen concert, or a baseball game.
But I remember how proud I was to live in the country Arlo Guthrie wrote about.
And now, can we play that song? Can I sing along without crying?
I can not. Not tonight. Or next week.
But I find comfort and sanity knowing I am not alone.
July 4th has traditionally been a celebration of our country’s independence.
This year, we are talking about Diddy, the Big, Disgraceful Bill, holiday traffic, Alligator Alcatraz, and the weather.
But there is tomorrow.
“This land was made for you and me.”
We definitely have work to do, you and me.
Happy Fourth.
We ignore the state of the word, send our dogs for training and do some work on the house.
July 5, 2025
For the past six weeks, give or take a day or three, I’ve felt like I’m living life on the edge of my seat. Like there is always a task I’ve forgotten, a place that I should be, a call I didn’t return.
Our lives been a little hectic. Jack and Chanel went to dog book camp to learn some manners; we just picked them up today so I’ll update on how successful it was. We had our floors done, translated, for about a week and a half all of our furniture was stuffed in a pod, behind a pod, in the back yard, in the basement; I couldn’t open the refrigerator without moving a table.
I feel weird whining about the stress of sending the dogs to training and doing some work on the house. But it was stressful. Layered on top of the stress of reading the news and living in the world in June, 2025. Maybe I should correct that to “living in these United States in the springtime of 2025”.
I’ve only found peace when I’m walking Bernadette around the neighborhood, headphones smashed on both ears, old playlists turned up so loud my phone scolds. I’ve found peace in the pool, sliding through water, one lap freestyle, the return backstroke. Deep dives to the bottom where I find leaves, hair ties, forgotten toy soldiers and headless Barbies.
I find peace as I fall into bed, slide under sheets, the whisper of an air conditioner, and the promise of sleep, and dreams, and the quieting of my mind, while I sleep.
The dogs are home. The table is where it belongs and the paintings are hung on the walls, mostly.
I’m hoping the uneasy weight around my shoulders will loosen and that I won’t need to immerse my thoughts in pop music, chlorine, pond water, or sleep made easy with chemicals.
It is summertime, and I am a summertime kind of girl.
This woman just needs to remember what that feels like, or figure out where the hell she went.
Reflections after visiting the doctor.
April 5, 2025
I went for my regular ob/gyn visit the other day. It had been a while, surprising given my age, sixty-two, and the joy of laying under fluttering paper with feet in stirrups, and bare bottom, shining like, yes, the moon. Of course, I don’t know what my bare bottom actually looked like; I was not in a position to see much except for my doctor. She was lovely and gracious, checked to make sure the room was the right temperature, allowed me to prattle on about my kids before we got down to the business of the appointment.
Afterwards, she washed her hands. I sat up on the table, my feet, still in socks, dangled towards the floor. The doctor explained everything looked good, my ovaries were shriveled up to about the size of tiny grapes, (didn’t she mean raisins?) and I needed to schedule my mammogram.
It was hard enough confirming my age at the beginning of the appointment. But to be reminded that I am in my sixth decade and then told that my ovaries were shriveled?
I left the appointment and called friends and made the whole conversation a funny anecdote ending with “can you believe she said that to me?”
The whole time I was chuckling on the phone, I was sulking inside. I didn’t want to go gently into the good night. I didn’t want to be sixty-two.
For the record, I don’t like what gravity has done to my breasts, the laugh lines around my eyes, (crinkles, I guess, the word sounds like shriveled to me,) and that my feet are sore when I first wake up if I don’t stretch them out before bed. I don’t like having to stretch my feet out before bed; I don’t have the time, I floss longer than anyone I know in an attempt to make up for all the years I didn’t listen to the dentist.
But it finally occurred to me that yes, I am sixty-two. it’s not quite as great as thirty-two. But my kids and I have actual conversations. The people I call my friends must be really good friends because they have stuck around so long. And that sixty-two might be a bit easier than seventy-two or eighty-two.
I’m healthy. I go the gym. I can survive a forty-five minute high intensity workout without having to sneak to the ladies room for a breath. My body is pretty good to me, crinkly eyes, defeated breasts, and shriveled ovaries.
Getting older is, (and this is hard to say but I truly believe it, most of the time,) a privilege. It will be whatever I make of it. I don’t think I will grow older gracefully, but I’ve never been graceful and that’s never bothered me at all.
I plan to continue being who I am, at sixty-two, and sixty-three, and so on, and, hopefully, so on.
Today, I spent some time with my twenty-one year old daughter. She was bemoaning all of the work she has to do for college, the challenges of finding a summer job, and juggling all of this, along with time with her friends and stuff like laundry. “There aren’t enough hours in the day!” she exclaimed.
I said, as people do, especially people my age who have recently been to the gynecologist- “Enjoy these times, Katy. They go by so fast.”
I don’t think she heard me, or she did, but I’ve said it before. But she doesn’t have a clue what I mean. Lucky, lucky, girl, my daughter.
And I am a very, lucky woman, a work in progress, who needs to go stretch my feet because I’ve got a lot to do in the morning.
Monday March 2025 Blues.
March 25, 2025
Today, it is raining and cold here in the Boston area. I worked from home, perched on a kitchen chair whose rattan seat sags, the dogs have nibbled on the caning, and three of them are out in the trash in front of the house, (the chairs, not the pups). I could end up on the floor before I’m done writing, or my bottom could fall in, and I could end up stuck, like a sad Winnie the Pooh, with no Piglet around for rescue.
Bernadette, our tiny, weird Frenchie, was chilled after her morning walk. I took her wet collar off and promptly lost it. Or Jack stole it, and it’s now somewhere out in the back yard in the dark, in the mud.
While cooking dinner, searching for soy sauce, I grabbed the coconut aminos from tippy top shelf and dropped them. The bottle shattered, brown, sticky liquid, shards of glass, all over the floor.
I went for the mop. While mopping, I somehow managed to break the mop, the sponge piece came out of the center while I was trying to wring the damn thing out in the sink. There was a lot to ring out, and still a lot left on the tile.
I used all the dishrags, and the floor only sticks a little when I walk across it.
I can’t take the dogs for a walk; Bernadette has no collar, Chanel has already gone upstairs to bed, disgusted with having to do her business in our dark, muddy, back yard. Jack is bouncing from couch to floor, from outside, to his pillow by the pellet stove.
Dinner was good, I guess. I used too much rice vinegar, I think, but hopefully it will taste better tomorrow because I will be eating it for a week.
The world outside my door, and further beyond our own little corner of Massachusetts, is raging. People are scared. People are angry. I’ve saved all the upcoming events at my church to the calendar- the potlucks, the marches, the singalongs. It feels like nothing but it’s something. It’s something.
I had to turn off the notifications from the Times on my phone. The news has to wait until the end of the day on work days, but I work in higher education and who knows what’s going to happen.
It was a Monday, I tell myself. It is time to floss, wash, pajama, slide cool overpriced serum and then cool, overpriced moisturizer on my face. More of them same, but different products, under my eyes.
It is time to take out my lenses. After that, the house will look a bit cleaner.
I feel like a failure because I broke a bottle and lost a collar. I feel like a failure I’m sitting in a chair that should have been tossed weeks ago. I feel like a failure because usually, when I feel like a failure, I take the dogs for a walk; the night sky, and the stars put things in perspective.
I guess I can look out the window.
The gift of tomorrow, for those of us blessed enough to have tomorrows to look forward to, is inestimable. I can’t find it in my heart to feel anticipation, or believe in it’s promise.
But I haven’t looked out the window yet. Or curled up on the sofa, with three, noisy, damp, dogs, who have already forgiven me for not taking them out for their walk.
And the chair didn’t collapse, so that’s something.
It’s been a quiet end of winter/beginning of spring season. The warmth, the sun, the first sight of crocuses, have not left my heart giddy and untethered, anxious for more, and joyful being able to walk a block in a tee-shirt and jeans.
With everything going on, my mood has been both somber and blessed. I have less to say than usual, I’m busy trying to make sense of the world and the people making noise in the world. I’m taking note of everything I have to be grateful for; it seems more important these days to appreciate everything I have to be grateful for.
The dogs make me laugh. Chanel is already upstairs waiting for me to join her in bed. Jack just brought me a moccasin he found in the back yard that looks more like part of a eviscerated rabbit than a shoe. Bernadette shimmies her butt every time I walk in the door, but only some of the time. I need to figure out what inspires her. Maybe she knows something we don’t.
There are the crocuses, the brave flowers of early spring. Ours are purple, and they are hidden behind a bush.
I’m not sure what to say to friends; we commiserate, we talk about our kids, how much sleep we’ve been sleeping, what we do when we can’t, a cold front, the temperature for the weekend and make gentle or barbed comments about the people in our lives. Whose husband stopped shaving. What seventeen year old only calls his mom “bro”. Which parent doesn’t want to move to assisted living but can’t remember to turn off the flame on the stove.
We promise to make time for a meal or a follow up call. There are pauses, long drawn out sighs, and things that aren’t really spoken about unless that can of worms opens, in which case we stay on the phone until we find an excuse to hang up.
There is food to be tended or a dog to be walked. Clothes to be thrown in the wash.
Yes, I am somber. But with all this gravity, there is also the weight and the luxury of blessings.
The obvious ones and the tiny graces like clean sheets, the upcoming Easter celebration at a friend’s, a call from Katy that I wasn’t expecting, coming across a poem I wrote a long time ago inside a paperback novel that I can’t decipher at all so it must be brilliant. There is the sliding my toes inside the sneakers that make me want to skip, the occasional amazing hair day, and the unexpected voice of Joe Cocker blaring out of my radio station, from a million years ago, asking if I’m feeling allright.
No, I’m not feelin’ too good myself.
But maybe I am.
I am somber and blessed, and brave, like a crocus. It’s early spring. Maybe giddy will come along, soon, for a while anyway.
I just need to make space.
julierichmond 