Wednesday, July 04, 2007

of fireworks past (happy independence day!)

It’s been a rainy Fourth of July for us, and our plans are up in the air. Or rather, non-existent. It’s just me, my mom, and my younger sister here. Adrienne spent the morning working at a busy café, and Mom and I have been writing. (Yes, I began the second draft! Over two thousand words, hooray!) Will we all scrape together enough energy to go searching for fireworks? Or make it a movie night? Not sure yet. But it makes me think about what we did other years…

I spent many Fourths of July watching fireworks at a place called Holiday Shores. We would park our car among the rest, and, not daring the mosquitoes in the grass, I perched on the edge of our Dodge’s warm hood, staring up at the sky. Partway into each year’s show, I would shut my eyes against the next several explosions, and then open my eyes as wide as I could, to fully take in the next burst.

That one, I would promise myself. I’ll remember that one forever. Then I’d clamp my eyelids shut again, until I couldn’t stand it anymore and then watch sparks fly across the sky. No! This one! I’ll remember this one forever!

Then the finale would come, and any chance of remembering those perfectly captured fireworks would be gone. Who can resist the finale?

After we moved, we found that the fireworks from Saint Louis can be seen from my aunt’s living room. So we spent several Fourths there, watching the distant bursts of light. During one, a cousin fresh from his bath curled up in my lap, content to twirl my hair rather than peer out at fireworks. “Do you remember what I was like when I was small?” he asked. Ha! How could I break it to him that being five still counted as being small?

There have been a few disappointing attempts to watch fireworks from TV, and I’ve promised myself never to try that again. It’s so much worse than not seeing any fireworks at all! Canned celebration. Ugh.

Oh, and there was definitely one year when, new to piano lessons, I had been assigned a two-line song called “July the Fourth,” and I think I hammered it out gleefully about four hundred times that night.

And then, two years ago, Mom and I were off writing in North Carolina on the Fourth. That night, we drove to the edge of the hotel parking lot, and watched the explosions above the trees. The next morning, I was thinking about the Revolutionary War, and I scratched out this poem as part of my warm-up exercises:

Independence Day

in fifth grade,
I would have spent Friday
coloring George Washington’s face
orange,
his lips, cherry red
eyes, blue
hair, grey
suit, black.

now I wonder
if anything is really that simple.

I liked the slightly cheeky tone of the poem, until I was horrified to remember: I wouldn’t have been in school in July! The infamous crayoned George Washington must have been for President’s Day in February. And, since I couldn’t make this a “President’s Day” poem, I decided it was utterly unpublishable, unprintable ... until now. Original poetry! A “Reflecting_Jenn” first! --jl

Posted by Jenn Langefeld on 07/04 at 08:26 PM
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