Fireworks

I’ve watched the fireworks in my home town every single year of my life except the year Magoo was born.  (That year we watched them while parked in a Menards parking lot.  Don’t ask.)  Watching them last night, I kept thinking about years past.

I thought about when I was a child and we would anxiously await the show all day.  I thought about how magical it always seemed and how exciting it was to be up so late.

Then I remembered sitting in lawn chairs when I was in high school, looking around watching boyfriends and girlfriends watching the show together.  My dream was to always lay under the show arm and arm with a boy watching the show.  Nothing seemed more romantic.

Then there was the first year I had a boyfriend on the Fourth.  He had to work that night, but I sat there under the stars enjoying the show, knowing that even though he wasn’t there with me, he was watching them across town from outside of the grocery store he worked at.  I’m sure I had “Somewhere Out There” playing through my head.

A few years later when I would watch them with my husband.  I was always grateful I finally had my “boy” to share them with, but I now looked around at all the parents with little kids and dreamed of one day watching the fireworks with a little one on my lap.

Finally, I remembered watching them a couple of months after my grandma died.  I spent that entire show talking to her in my mind, hoping she was somewhere watching over us and enjoying the show from the other side.

It’s interesting when you have a benchmark like this that happens every year.  You have something to measure the years and the memories by.

And this year at the fireworks, I must admit that I didn’t watch much of the show.  Instead of gazing the sky, my eyes were fixed on my two little girls and their expressions as they saw the show.  Magoo was sitting on a blanket with the other kids making comments after every firework, awed that each seemed better than the last.  The Goose sat in my arms, alternately entranced by and slightly spooked by the show.  For once, she spent an entire fifteen minutes cuddled in my arms without trying to squirm away.

I didn’t take any pictures of the sky last night.  All of my pictures were of my girls’ reactions to the fireworks, and that’s where my memories will lie as well.

I will always remember this Fourth as the year that I learned that the fireworks are more spectacular when you see them reflected in the eyes of a child.