A Toast to the Fourth

[This is one of those posts, the kind I hate reading because it makes me shift uncomfortably in my seat. sorry...but not really...]

It’s 4^th of July and I know that everywhere, under every single boom that I can hear through my painted-shut windows, there are smiles and people together, because they want to be…even if maybe at first they weren’t happy to be there, those sparkles in the sky are keeping together for one second. One second, and then it’s gone, and if someone came after they’d be too late, but these people are there together under that one explosion of light and color and bursts of a feeling of childhood all over again.

I know there are other people who feel the same as me. But for some reason this is worse than Christmas was. Much worse. At Christmas there were all of us, every single one, but the 4^th of July was always different. It was spontaneous and uncertain, we never really had plans, and the ones we did have were usually broken. But there was a certain factor that held it all together – Mama.

I remember last year we chased fireworks around Anderson. Of course by the time we always found them there was nothing but smoke, but I remember sitting in a grassy field next to the civic center, all of the cars pulling out, nothing but tail lights and head lights and brake lights and people leaving. But we all stayed, doors open, the top to Bobby’s little beamer down and we played oldies, and Mama took pictures. There aren’t any pictures of her from that night. Like most of our occasions or strange moments, she was the one with the camera. I wish I had a picture of her. And I remember on the way home, after dropping off the sisters and the brother-in-laws at their respective apartments, she and I stopped beside the lake and watched the lights popping up all over the shore lines and I stood on the sill of the door, holding on to the luggage rack with my face to the sky, and she had the window down with her head out yelling for me to get in, but not really caring because she was smiling too.

I miss her so much. I don’t let myself think about it very often, because it cripples me for days, takes me hours to scrape myself off the floor, to paint my face back on. I feel like I should have it together by now, but I think I may be realizing for the first time how permanent this is. By now I feel like she should’ve come popping through the door, that crazy wide grin on her face and a “Surprise!” Like this is the cruelest joke ever pulled off, and every part of me wishes it was. And the reality: it isn’t.

Happy Birthday America. If you were a person I’d share my bottle of wine with you