All through my life, fireworks have been one of my favorite things. Maybe it's a function of growing up where I did, among the bluffs along the River, but for me it was the sound--and the feeling, the real, visceral feeling deep in your gut when that sound made its way through the air and the ground and up through your feet and legs and through your middle--that made fireworks so awe-inspiring and wonderful. I loved the fourth of July (the day before my Dad's birthday) because it was always a big-deal day, stuck as it was toward the end of the big local summer festival. The festival was the best when it was 'down by the river' but as I became old enough to drive myself and meet my friends to wander the carnival and hang out "after dark" it was by the 'big lake', and in all honesty it was probably just as cool there, too. The moonlight on a hot night, peeking through the trees on the bluffs, reflected off the water, the carnival rides, the shrieking kids and the too-cool teenagers, the mysteries of the Beer Tent (which I've still yet to visit)...and on the last night, the fireworks. Since it's my small town, there is an odd twist to accompany what would be a pretty normal occurrence anywhere else: the local AM radio station provides "color commentary" for those who cannot attend. Yes, deejays have to try to explain fireworks, as they happen, for a radio audience. When I was little, my family would sit in the car to watch (fewer bug bites for 3 kids on a July night in the north that way), and we would listen to the radio, too. "That was a large blue one, shaped like a chrysanthemum!" "Well, Roy, this looks more like a bundle of purple loosestrife." "Oooh, there were some standard white puffballs, followed by yellow spinners. This is a great show!" Too funny.
My hometown was big on the fireworks thing, going all out for Independence Day but doing another show at least once a year, usually, for some trumped-up reason. The larger city to the southeast draws the big crowds both for the Fourth and for New Years' Eve, though, because they have a great natural spot from which to watch, and they're also just a bigger city (and in a different state, in which fireworks are less strictly regulated). Shortly after I agreed to marry my former spouse, we attended a fireworks "extravaganza" (sorry, but there really is no other word for it) in that city. It was a sort of trade show where producers and distributors showed off the biggest and brightest that they had to offer (literally!). It took forever to get there, forever to find parking, and once we did, we knew we wouldn't get out until it was all over.
And then we had the fight. God knows how it started, but it pertained to engagement and wedding rings, and who should choose them. Whether the "gift" element was as or more important as the "I am the one who will arguably be wearing this every damned day for the rest of my life so shouldn't I at least have a say?" element. Needless to say, it made the prospect of sitting on the hood of the car for 2+ hours watching shit explode not so fun. In the end, he won the argument ('cause, didn't he always? At least at that point?) and (or perhaps because) the show was so damned cool. It was truly one of the most impressive things that I have ever seen. I have no idea how far we were from the actual explosions, but it was so loud, and so bright (at times)...I will never forget that. Again, the reverberation from bluff to bluff was the best part, at least for me. Feeling it as much as seeing it.
One year on Independence Day, not too far into my marriage, the ex and I were traveling between the place where his parents were living at the time, which is along the shore of one of the large inland lakes, and his original hometown. We were driving south, and we left his parents' place just at dusk. That night, we had one of the best driving experiences that either of us could ever encounter; we drove through, past, around, toward, probably 20 or 30 different fireworks displays. It was awesome. Once we realized what was happening, we slowed down some (he was a road warrior, always in a huge hurry [worse than me]), turned off the radio, and enjoyed the ride. There was something spectacular about it that went quite beyond colorful explosions and unexpected booms; we were sharing something that we both loved, silently, joyfully.
The house that the ex and I bought, 9 years into our marriage, 3 years before the divorce, was just up the street from a park in the next town over. That park happens to be the place from which that town shoots off their Fourth of July fireworks. The first year we were there, we walked to the park and watched from a blanket along with a couple of friends and a zillion other people, incurring bug bites and child-induced annoyance and not really seeing all that much. It was a total let-down for me, because (surprisingly, for this area) we were downhill from the firing point, so I couldn't feel any of it. It was, in a word, a dud. The next two years, we didn't bother--we watched from our family room, all the lights in the house turned off, A/C turned off to diminish the noise cover, a couple of windows opened to let in the sound. It wasn't Kansas anymore, Toto, but it was a reasonable alternative. It was pretty cool.
Why all this? Because Nick is not a fan of fireworks (at all), they haven't been a part of my life for 3 years. In fact, I have gone out of my way to avoid them. The stray amateur booms that I hear tend to piss me off, much like dogs off-leash in the city, or anything else that is attached to an irrational fear of my own. "Why is someone else's lack of consideration putting me in this position?!" This Wednesday, I will be faced with a choice: I can go back, to what I've loved before, seek out some exploding stuff someplace, and see what that does to me; or, I can continue as I have been going, living without it, accepting that this new me is not entirely a 'me' of his making. I've given Nick too much credit and too much blame for what has occurred between us and to me. Perhaps this is who I am now. Prehaps.
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