Look up and be dazzled

The fires in California and Oregon have been hungry, violent beasts and I don’t want to see another home, be it human dwelling or wild forest, lost.

I hear the calls demanding sanity and a ban on all fireworks and my heart breaks.

I love fireworks.

The United States of America isn’t very “United” at all right now and that breaks my heart too.  I looks at people I’ve always known as loving, generous, wonderful human beings and I see them ready to accept the most inhuman things because ??? I’m not sure why, but it keeps me from being able to see them the same way again. And again my heart breaks. It’s like I can suddenly understand the brother against brother beliefs that made the civil war possible. And I don’t like knowing that lurks under our surface still.

Then I see the people explaining that the loud fireworks scare their animals, and I know it’s true. I hear the survivors of war zones explaining about their stress and panic and PTSD and I can only imagine how hard that is. I’ve never had to prove I could survive something like that.

I feel for them, and yet I love fireworks. Let me tell you why.

When I was a child, visiting relatives back in Illinois and Pennsylvania, I loved their big front porches with gliders, rockers, swings or davenports.  I loved the neighbors walking by and on seeing someone sitting out there, escaping the swelter of un-air-conditioned homes, stepping up and taking their own seat, to sip lemonade or iced tea and sit a spell. Chatting over big news and random thoughts was a given.

Living in my hometown, there were few porches, but the tradition of “yard-saling” created a similar experience. The random person wandering through, conversations taking a friendly turn about the town as connections were explored, “oh, right, I went to school there too.” As a cook book with both families recipes turns up in a dusty stack.  And, “I remember playing with one of these.” As an old toy was bartered over.

Fireworks displays are like that, on a much larger scale. Political, racial, religious differences are forgotten, and faces turn skyward in anticipation as the sunset grows dim.  Wandering around through throngs of locals and tourists alike, dipping in and out of pools of conversation and music ranging from Johnny Cash to Kendrick Lamar, one follows the connections and topics of surprising friendliness that stops and becomes breathless “ooh and Ah” as the sky ignites. Having never lived through a battle zone, most of us may owe our freedom to soldiers, but find only memories and hopes of friends and family stretching back and forth through generations.

In the heat of the 4th we leave our homes for parades and bbqs and fireworks and share traditions with strangers who share the same traditions from “Sea to Shining Sea” in a way we don’t for the winter holidays when we blanket our families indoors and shut out the cold.

I am sorry, for the frightened pets and people, and I understand the need to be carefully prepared for fire risks, but I hope the right to celebrate together, with big, awe inspiring, shut my mouth wide open and make me forget my cell phone delight, shall never vanish from this land that I love, warts and all.