Note: This is an update of an earlier post on my family tradition of backyard fireworks. May it last one more year.
"Is that thunder?" I asked my husband on Tuesday night. I was braced for it. The summer has been one of boom-and-pour here in Wisconsin. Our yard squishes like an overfull sponge. But, no. "That's the big fireworks show," he answered.
"Oh, right." I always forget that show because our July 4th family tradition is one of tiny fireworks, the kind that on a good night twinkle above, say, the lilac bush before fizzling away. Most of them pretty much snap and sparkle at knee height, exciting our dog into hiding behind the deck table and, I always imagine, terrifying the insects that lie snoozing in the grass.
Both my husband and I remember going to big firework shows as kids, oohing as the lights exploded across the sky. But we both recall backyard explosions too. When I was growing up in Louisiana, we kids would back into the safe shelter of azalea bushes while our apparently fearless fathers and big brothers lit cherry bomb firecrackers - notorious for their tendency to blow up unexpectedly and take fingers with them. We'd emerge afterwards to zoom around our yards with sparklers dazzling in our hands.
I think it was sparklers that began our own family tradition. When my older son was small we bought a pack from a fireworks stand and I can still remember him leaping around our California backyard, making trails of light in the darkness. We lived in Sacramento then and fireworks stands sprouted around the city come summer. The next year, we added to our backyard show - purchasing snakes, and glowworms, and bright papered cylinders that promised to light up like flower gardens and city skylines and strings of pearls.
There would be Peter, my husband, with a lighter in one hand and a hose in the other. The fireworks would twinkle in the dark. They were tiny by show standards but they were taller than my son, Marcus, who barely came up to Peter's knees. He would squeak with delight, reflected colors sprinkled across his face. "Do another, Dad!" (You remember the moment so perfectly later - the way your son's face glowed in the night, lit by sparklers and happiness).
When we moved to Wisconsin some 16 years ago, when Marcus was seven and our younger son Lucas was three, we kept up the tradition. Madison doesn't allow firework stands but we would drive out into the country to find our supplies. Some of our friends would find ever larger rockets - one son's friend set the roof of their house on fire with a firework bombardment. And as the boys got older, our explosions got bigger too. Waist high, shoulder high, lilac bush high.
And now our sons took over lighting the fuses. They'd wait for that faint sizzle and jump back laughing. Peter and I were the audience only, sitting in our lawn chairs and applauding. Reassuring the dog. "Wow," I'd say, as a confetti of light blew across in the yard. "Wow, you really picked a good one there." And sometimes I'd put my fingers in my ears as the firework screamed like a siren. "Mom," would come the call. "Don't be such a wuss."
Two summers ago, Marcus graduated from the University of Wisconsin and moved to Chicago. Not far at all and infinite miles away. "What do you want to do for July 4th this year?" I ask Lucas, newly 19, newly turning into an adult. He looks at me in astonishment. Backyard fireworks, of course. He has a summer job as a grocery store bagger so he can't pick them out but he authorizes me to acquire the supplies. "Don't forget that I like the Killer Bee kind." I buy three of them,bright tiny rockets that I know will sprout tiny golden wings in the night.
And then I buy an armload of bigger ones - a Falling Star, a PeaceKeeper, a St. Helena Volcano - a fortress worth of tiny fireworks, arming myself against the quieter, darker holiday in my future.
- Image: Backyard fireworks 2012/Deborah Blum*
