A big town near us hosts fireworks on a Thursday night before Independence Day to save money, so we've already seen our annual pyrotechnical display, though the 4th of July is two days away.
Fireworks seem a little silly to the adult in me, who knows how much those gaudy explosions cost. But the adult in me also values nostalgia and tradition -- I love that Americans publicly gather for mutual awe. It is sweet. And it really does inspire awe (once you shush the adult in you that keeps grumbling about literally burning money). Each year the display amazes with its power and color and variety. For Husband and I, we're watching for something new. This year it was fireworks that exploded in fountains and then each "drip" of the fountain blossomed into a mini-firework partway down the sky. Last year it was fireworks that resembled cascading waterfalls. A few years ago, it was a new orange-colored firework we didn't remember seeing in earlier shows. Best, of course, is hearing your children ooh and aah. Motormouth Huckle kept a running commentary about each firework -- types he liked best; how this one compared to the last; thoughts about seeing fireworks from an airplane. I love to hear his thoughts. Sally doesn't need her ears covered any more, as she did when younger. She would sit on my lap and I would help her guard against those cannon-like booms (not against her brother's half-hour discussion). Now she has her own chair in our row and doesn't cover her ears and thinks her own thoughts, including thoughts about how much she doesn't like the loud booms.
This year, my favorite light display wasn't in the sky; or, at least, it was barely in the sky. This year, we chose not to sit with the crowd on the lawn of the local high school. Instead, we parked at the township building separated from the high school by a cornfield. The location was quiet, only a dozen other families, most quiet crowd-avoiders like us. Dusk fell. It was dark enough that the kids asked, "NOW will they start? Isn't it time? Could it be any minute now?". It was still too light for the fireworks. We faced east, looking over the cornfield toward the high school on one side and a dark line of trees on the other. There was nothing special about the cornfield, and yet I now rank it among the most amazing sights I have ever seen. Just above the knee-high stalks were more fireflies than I have ever seen all together. In the quiet of the evening, in the dusk of the day, the field sparkled, like a crop of star spangles ripe for Independence Day. The glows were not random flits in all directions, as on our lawn. Rather, the thousands of flickers were uniform in height, skimming the tops of the cornstalks as if tethered by stems, and were synchronized in direction, with each light ascending. I don't know why the fireflies only lit their ascents and not their descents, but the result was lovely. No booms, just a field where the works of fire were small and natural and more beautiful than my words can describe.
I have added this image to my mind's collection of memorable settings, like William Wordsworth describes in his poem Daffodils. It sits beside a favorite memory of the first snowfall in a redwood forest -- craning my head to see the treetops in a sky full of large, lazy snowflakes, drifting white against the still dark needles, silently filling a woods that has stood for a thousand years. When I am old and sitting in a nursing home, perhaps I'll find the words to describe these experiences.
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