4th of July

I've talked a lot about how much Emma liked holidays - any holiday. But if there was one holiday that Emma had mixed feelings about, it would have been the 4th of July. And there is one word that sums up the reason for Emma's ambivalence - fireworks.


From the time Emma was a baby until she was 11, 4th of July was spent at Gram & Gramps' house - so far, so good. There were always lots of cousins around. Gram and Gramps had a great big pool and even when Emma was tiny, she loved being in that water. She could outlast just about any cousin. Fortunately, there were enough cousins, aunts and uncles, that she could always persuade someone to go swimming with her.

When the water got boring, there were lots of games to fill the day. We had family softball games and wiffle ball games. We had badminton and volleyball and croquet matches from time to time, and at some point bocce and washers got thrown into the mix. Still all good with the Emster.

You couldn't argue with the food. Sometimes we had the standard hot dogs and hamburgers, but those were usually supplemented with brats, or grilled chicken or some other great picnic food. Those would be supplemented by potato salad, coleslaw, banana salad, corn - ofetn more food than the table could hold. Dessert was no different. There would be ice cream and cake and pie and, of course, Emma's favorite, s'mores. Up through the picnic dinner, Emma was still a-okay with the 4th of July.

But sometime after dinner was cleaned up, dusk would begin to fall and it would be time to start thinking about the dreaded fireworks.


For the first few years of Emma's life, the family fireworks display required a venue shift. Sometime after dinner we would all head down to my brother Bob's house which was just a short distance down the road from my parents. Bob and one or two assistants would usually get a head start and would get the fireworks set up by the time we arrived.  The family-made would show as soon as everyone had arrived and it was fully dark. 


The first year we went, when Emma was just 1, we quickly learned that fireworks weren't for her.  Emma and I spent most of our time in my brother's family room looking at books and doing whatever we could to drown out the sound of the fireworks. I think we tried again the next year, thinking maybe she would have outgrown her fear, but no dice. After that, for several years we would just head home in the early evening and avoid the fireworks altogether.


Knowing what we came to know about our Emma, it wasn't all that surprising that she hated fireworks. She wasn't a fan of any loud noises.  In fact, she spent her kindergarten year putting her fingers in her ears when the school bus rounded the corner toward the bus stop because she thought it was so loud. She also didn't like things that were unpredictable. So how could she possibly have liked our home-grown fireworks displays? They were the embodiment of the words loud and unpredictable.My brothers specialized in the squealers and the boomers and every firework that made an obnoxious noise. And while, there was always a game plan for how the fireworks went off, the show rarely went off according to plan. There was always one firework that shot off in the wrong direction, sometimes toward the spectators, or one that only exploded as someone walked toward it to re-light it. Thinking back on these shows, Emma had quite good sense. They really were kind of scary.


At some point when Emma was early elementary age, the family fireworks displays were shifted to Gram and Gramps' house and Emma found a tolerable way to participate. She and I would discreetly find our way into the family room of the house just as the show was about to begin. From the family room, you could look out the window, over the heads of the spectators gathered on the patio, and see the show from a safe and relatively quiet distance. This was fireworks Emma-style.

When Emma was 11 our family started spending our summers at camp and our 4th of July was spent there. There were pioneer meets, and the Paul Revere riders would charge through camp in the early morning hours to warn that the British were coming. There was good food, good company, friendly competition and - no fireworks!


Emma's last 4th of July was spent in Mann, West Virginia. Peter, Emma and I had traveled down there with a large group of adults and teens from our community with Appalachian Service Project. On the 4th of July we took a brief break from the week of hard work on local houses and trailers to celebrate a national holiday.  And I believe Emma 2.0, now a mature 16, fully enjoyed sitting on the street with her friends watching the town fireworks display. I was a comfortable distance away, but as far as I know, she didn't even have her fingers in ears.