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.

Moving On

 Time, the way it changes things and the way the important things remain unchanging in the face of the passage of time, is the underlying theme in the book, Double Time On The Oregon Trail, and in my life.  Lately we have been very focused on waiting for a date we both anticipated and dreaded.  Our son, and the daughter of our heart, were moving away to start their first year of college.  The time seemed to both drag slowly and fly by as other people their age started at schools on the semester system and they waited for a class that didn't begin until Sept. 27.

 Then they were hired to work at the dining hall and their arrival time moved up to September 18, but we still had lots of wonderful days to watch movies and eat big meals and play at the river. And then there was no more time. We were loading the van and driving and driving and driving and realizing that it is a long, long way to anywhere from Del Norte County California.

There were hugs and tears and a last day exploring around the San Francisco, Tiburon, Great Highway area and then more hugs and tears and SMILES.  There is so much joy in seeing babies turn into wonderful people, and seeing impossible dreams become reality.

 I have not written much in the last month, but now there will be time, and I have been lucky enough that some people are starting to discover my books.  I had a teacher of a 5th grade class order a class set of the Oregon Trail book.  I was thrilled by that of course, then I came home to find that "Lisa Day on the Web" had posted an excellent review of the book too.

http://lisaday.weebly.com/4/post/2012/09/double-time-on-the-oregon-trail.html

 It is funny, sending your kids to college, and publishing your book are two things with a lot in common.  You put so much time and love and effort into both writing a book and raising a baby, and then you offer it up to the world and open your hands and wait to see what happens. You hope that you have built it a strong enough bridge that it can move on into the rest of the world and find welcome and love and success.