Author’s Note: This story, or blog, or poem, I don’t know what is, started as a text a friend. But it had legs and substance and I kicked it around a bit until it become this idea…this…perhaps…so one night, when I had some time, and needed a distraction, I decided to write it down. But as I polished it, I realized that I needed a disclaimer, because, well because anything we put out there just does these days…

I know fireworks aren’t great. They’re bad for pets, bad for veterans, bad for the planet. They cause fires and injuries and air pollution. Trust me, I know. And it’s something I wrestle with every year. So if, after you read this, you still want to chastise me, go ahead. I get it. I won’t complain or stop you. I know the risks. In some ways, I’m a total hypocrite. I signed a petition to ban them in Big Bear Valley to protect Jackie, Shadow, Gizmo, and Sunny… so yeah, you get to do what you need to do.

But… this isn’t a love letter to fireworks.

It’s about something older. Deeper. More personal.
Louder, in a way.
Quieter, too, I suppose.

It’s about love and magic, being young, growing up, and all the feelings I have as a middle-aged woman in the thick of all the crises I’m supposed to be feeling and probably a few I’m not. About how sometimes I wish I could take it all back. A mulligan. A do-over. Another shot at 20… or 30. And how sometimes, I wonder if they feel the same. What if they got a do-over? A shot at redemption? What if they made a different decision?

I wouldn’t be mad.
Hell, I wouldn’t even know.

It’s about the stuff we don’t talk about at dinner.
And how, sometimes, in the right kind of darkness,
that ember beckons…

Mismanaged Mischief

Uncle Jack brings the big ones,
from some backroad stand in South Carolina
or maybe West Virginia,
the kind of place where warning labels fade in the sun,
and the whistle of a soft, sibilant s through missing incisors
makes she’s a beaut sound so much like Randy Quaid
you want to die from the perfection of it.

I don’t know.
I’m not there.

I’ve never been invited to witness the purchase.
But in my imagination, I’ve seen the displays,
boxes called Bamboozled, Honey Badger,
and Fresh Hot Bacon.
And I can picture,
in the most horrid, stereotypical fashion,
the man peddling large, incendiary devices
to my almost 80-year-old father.
And I always wonder:
is this the year someone loses a digit?

The real show will be just past dusk,
almost full dark,
when the sky softens into those pink and blue hues
the tourists take photos of.
You can set your watch by the retreat of the damp curtain
of coastal tides and winds
that lift just enough to let you breathe,
but still press against your skin
so you don’t forget:
Summer makes you earn the night.

His transformation though, that comes early.
Long before dusk or touristy Instagram memories.
I’ve never actually seen it,
but I know the signs.
Him shifting, edging backward through time
toward adolescence and carefree reverie.
It starts with a punk,
something I always call a pongee stick,
which makes him laugh every year.
I can see it burning against the dark grass,
a single ember in the shadows of almost-night.
That’s my cue to remind him
to be grown-up,
but it’s always too late.

Suddenly, he’s twelve again,
lobbing black cats at our feet,
cackling when we flinch,
tucking bottle rockets into our empty beer bottles,
tilting them skyward with the precision of chaos.
His eyes burn with youth,
mischief once gotten and long passed,
the echo of it,
a flare that won’t last.

They start moving toward the end of dock,
a wagon and small children in tow,
our only cue to get in or get out,
History has taught us to watch from the yard,
Because at least once,
he’s sent a mammoth screamer into the sound,
where some poor fish,
just swimming by and minding his own business,
met his fate,
bobbing like a question we couldn’t answer,
surfacing to threaten the fragile line between should we or
shouldn’t we.

I guess we’re all in,
we find our seats,
and suddenly the tell tale HISSSSSSS of the first wave
erupts into purple blooms and silver rain,
green comets that crackle and fly haphazardly,
red chrysanthemums that shatter into stars fall around us.

The crowd oohs.

The kids gasp.

The sparks fall in slow motion,
some of them too low
or too close,
I wonder, are the gasps awe or oh?
The displays from the island
and up and down the coast mirror ours,
and if you sit in just the right place,
it’s like watching fireworks in stereo.
And just like that,
We are all twelve again.

I no longer sit on the dock,
under the action.
In my old age, I’ve opted for a safer,
more respectable seat in the yard.

But I never stray far,
the vigilant eldest daughter,
Keeper of Mismanaged Mischief,
Queller of Fun.
I make sure,
I can still hear him.
I can still see him.

He laughs like someone
who’s forgotten to be tired.
And for a moment,
so do I.
And it’s so easy to get lost
in the pageantry of it all,
the opulence,
the awesomeness.

I look at my father.
See him.
Eyes lit with color,
mouth open in a boy’s laughter
I rarely hear anymore,
a laugh that time,
and age,
and responsibility
have folded into a box
labeled special occasions only.

I want to scream,
WAIT!
We aren’t ready yet.
It’s not time yet.

But in the dark,
the pongee stretches out,
licks the final fuse,
and the finale brings us to our feet,

I have nothing left to protest.

It’s over.

A lingering smoke cloud
and the faint smell of sulfur in the air,
the only trace
that the veil between is and was
had unraveled.
Just long enough to let him through.
But time erases,
and magic fades,
and just like that, he’s gone.

And the boy I never knew,
goes quiet again.

The squeaky wheel of the wagon returning
lets me know I’m right.

And it hits me,
maybe it isn’t fireworks we’re talking about at all.