The usual rounds on the forums always has a flair for somebody at some point asking the ubiquitous [and often cyclical] question- obviously this one baited to this month:
"What's your favorite 4Th of July memory?"
Chalk my answer up to age. Chalk it up to melancholy. Put whatever label, impetus or chronicle you'd like to my choice but my choice today may stem to something different a day, week, month or year from now...
Memory is a fickle thing. Perhaps molded by the exhuberance of youth, the temperance of age or the ire of hard lessons or experience earned.
My 'perfect' memory itself is actually quite simple;
It was 1971, I was 6 years old, I was spending a two week stay with my grandparents.It was my first time with sparklers that holiday evening...
If one can reach to the vestiges of such past ghosts; imagine the awe of such glittering pyrotechnic splendor as the flint and saltpeter mixed wires spark, lighting wherever your little feet could carry you...
I was given the possibility of self mutilation. But it was also the first big responsibility of entertaining myself with something far more dangerous than the blunt helmet of Major Matt Mason swung in anger over my brother's head.
I remember my grandmother questioning each and every wire being lit by my grandfather that "it wasn't a good idea" or that "this seems to dangerous for a six year old"- all the while my grandfather consoling her worries and repeating with each new sparkler the need to "be careful or you'll light yourself on fire or melt your fingers off..."
It was my Trial By Sparkler.
I remember the day; perhpas not "as if it were yesterday", but as a tenaciously held memory I pray never escapes me...
I remember my grandfather had to go to work in the mines for the day, and my grandmother watched over my twin and me between gulped-down breakfasts and lunches. Within bites of whatever was passed in front of me [nothin' beat Gran-ma's cookin'- who cared what it was, we knew it was good!] I can still recall the desperate, innate need of little boys to get back to the immediacy of a giant cardboard box or GI Joe exploration of the 'lunar surface' of the local dirt mound.
I even remember "quiet time" naps to the sound of the droning window mounted air-conditioner and constantly asking where Crappaw was and when he'd be returning...
Now- where I'm going with this long-winded rendition of past experiences, one has to understand where I am today. I've seen firework displays to end all in Washington- even in my hometowns; I've been the part of massive displays that have been the conversations of many all over the world; to be a part of something bigger truly one seldom forgets- but that which stands out greatest in our minds are those things most tangible and most intimate to who and what we are to become...
So, times change; notions evolve and memories one would pray remain fluid begin their inexorable and damning fade. My time now is vastly different and gone to me from my yester-years- leaving a space that only etherial images and vaunted smells and sounds tantelize me with it's inconsiquential nature then- now made so much more desirable; as well as bittersweet.
My grandfather; he's gone now.
Age and health having given way to the spirit roughly 2 months ago...
My grandmother's health these days is stoic, but I gather questionable; a nursing home and a body unwilling to bend to will and desire rending her time away from her beloved home, usually full of talkative adults and squeeling children.
That home I desperately couldn't get enough of- the squeeking floors, sticking doors and the real wooden blinds- now stands a sad and screamingly silent vigil...
Yes, perhaps by some personal laconic need for identifiers of my past I'm so nostalgic- perhaps the still-recent loss to my family entreats the selfish portrait I wax poetic...
Still, for this time- this 'now'- nothing may yet beat the intimacy of my grandparents' undivided attention and the flittering lights and acrid smoke of those first tiny flares of magnesium and flame...
Even at that tender age of six, I cherished that day, that evening- those weeks. I knew my time was special with my grandparents. I want to think that my observations then lend character and credance to the bittersweet notions of this '4th' I feel today
I look back, perhaps with the hope that my six-year-old will one day remember me, like I did those who molded me so long ago.
This will be his first Trial by Sparkler...
I continue to be...
Russ
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