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"Suffice it to say, the 3rd best blastocyte became our beloved Huckleberry and I think of July 5th as a holy day in our family. When he became my blood and my body."

I’m writing this on the 5^th, as I sit on my porch with my dog next to me and the birds chirping (mostly Carolina Wrens, Cardinals, Mockinbirds, although yesterday an Indigo Bunting came to visit) and the chimes chiming in the breeze. We spent yesterday evening together with a bunch of friends, our yearly hang our friend Paul Schatzkin puts together for a Nashville Sounds game (our AAA baseball team). The Sounds fireworks are always amazing and last night, they overlapped with Nashville’s incredible display which was happening just a few blocks away, over the tall condos that weren’t there a few years ago. It was pretty spectacular.

One of my favorite July 4^th memories was the summer my sister and I were camp counselors at Camp Wind-In-The-Pines in Plymouth, MA and we all had the night off and went to the harbor in Plymouth (near THE rock) and watched the fireworks while a symphony played. I was 20, she was 19. We were young, in college, far away from our home, new friends, the ocean, silly camp counselor names (I was Gooch, she was Dizzy).

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I remember years of finding the right rooftop in NYC or Hoboken to watch the West Side fireworks with friends. I remember sitting on the edge of the river in Nashville my first year here, watching them light up the Cumberland. I remember the one when I was single and sad and was invited with sober friends to go downtown to watch them and my friend Jamey wanted me to drive to his parents’ house a few hours away for their family celebration along the Tennessee River and I kept telling him I was too sad and he wouldn’t want me there. He almost convinced me, offered to drive 2 hours back to Nashville to get me (I still didn’t think he was interested in me… I was dumb).

4^th of July can be weird if you’re grieving. You can’t hide from the celebrations. They keep your dog running under the bed. No matter where we live, most of us hear them somewhere. You can’t run from explosive joy (literally). As we say in the rooms of recovery, it’s just another day.

It is the 5^th of July that means a lot to me. I had my students this week write a song about the day after a holiday (or the day before), because I think there are really interesting stories to tell about the lead up or the clean-up. What was left behind. What was found.

This morning, our church did a kind of Lessons and Carols service (an Episcopal thing). Instead of the usual, there were four readings, and none were from the Bible. One, a poem by Maya Angleou. The second, a speech by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the third, a portion of Frederick Douglas’ speech “What To the Slave is The Fourth of July”, and the final was an excerpt from Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb.” In between the incredible musicians sang “This Land is Your Land,” John Prine’s “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven,” “America the Beautiful.” After hearing those readings, the patriotic songs rang differently to me.

Honestly, I’d kind of ignored whatever crazy was going on in DC for the 250^th celebration of the United States. But late last night, I did see (and was not surprised) that white supremacists marched. As they do. So this morning, it was great to be in a community that acknowledges the celebration of “freedom” that we have on every 4^th is really a false freedom, as there was a huge population of people, human beings, not a part of that independence. And, if we’re being completely honest, still are not. As a woman, to know that 250 years later there is still not an equal rights amendment is shocking. We are not free until we all are free.

But fireworks are cool and so are AAA baseball games.

9 years ago, on the Fifth of July, Jamey and I drove to Chattanooga to our fertility clinic. We’d been doing IVF with an egg donor. It was pouring down rain, thunder and lightening everywhere. We’d already had one failed implant of a 5-day old blastocyte. I could have sworn I was pregnant. I felt pregnant. When my doctor called 2 weeks later to tell me that I was not pregnant, I fell to the ground in despair. I felt that all my past sins were coming back to punish me. I got really really dark. Jamey made me go on a walk with him. He said to me, “We will try again. That one was not meant to be. We have to try again.”

And so, on July 5, 2017, we made the stormy drive back to Chattanooga to try again. When we got to the clinic, they informed us that the first blastocyte they thawed had fallen apart and that we would have to wait another 30 minutes to thaw the ‘3^rd best.’ While we waited, the power went out because of the storm. No matter, they assured us, we will work under generator power. Great, I thought, completely convinced all of this was a sign and not a good one.

Suffice it to say, the 3^rd best blastocyte became our beloved Huckleberry and I think of July 5^th as a holy day in our family. When he became my blood and my body. Since he was not my egg, it is my claim of conception. This year, July 5^th is a Sunday and we will all be in church together and for that, I am grateful. I will hold his 8-year-old, almost ‘too cool for school’ hand and feel the blessing that he is and say a prayer to my God(dess) of thanksgiving and grace.

The Fifth of July, a poem from my upcoming collection, The Cardinals with Red Hen Press

Ramparts and bombs bursting. Family barbecues and baseball. Taylor Swift’s wedding and Aaron Parnas’ grieving family. White supremacists and people of color still experiencing violence and economic and voting inequity. My poetry friends in our text chain sent photos of our dogs in red, white and blue things (I did not, as my dog, Dusty Springfield, is way too cool to be dressed in patriotic colors and she is cynical about all celebrations). One sent this.

From Walt Whitman.