I'm not sure when Independence Day became one of my top holidays. I'm not really a picnic-in-the-heat kind of kid, and I never was. But this one day of the year, there is nothing I like more. I get to dress myself in red and white stripes (I did again today) with blue accents (this time on my Keds), and I feel plugged in to a patriotic vibe that has hummed through my entire life, not just in the decades when I was in an active duty military family, or when I was in Small-Town-Heartland Oklahoma. I really dig this whole thing, and I have for almost my whole life. Yeah, there was that brief time in fourth grade when I felt more German than American after living overseas for years, but I mostly got over that when the Bicentennial celebrations overwhelmed me in a shower of sparks from fireworks fountains in my back yard. And you know, the best part might just be that all of the red, white, and blue merchandise is going to be on clearance in the morning.
We moved away from Colorado 22 years ago, and while the intention was never to turn our backs on our large circle of friends, that was the net effect. We worked hard to keep up with a handful of them, but we went in cycles, seeing some far more often than others. Some completely dropped off our radar. We moved back to Colorado two years ago, and I am embarrassed to say, it has taken until today for us to reconnect with some of those people we loved so well when we left. There is an annual BBQ at the home of one of our favorite characters from our old life, and we have been invited since we came back to town. The first year we were just too worn out to do anything on the 4th other than sit in that tiny apartment on a hill and watch the distant flashes of colored light around Denver. Last year... well... I don't want to think about the state I was in last July. I may have been independent, but I was not celebrating that fact. This year I'm on firmer footing, and ready to re-enter that particular orbit. I heard names mentioned that I had lost into the mists of my giant memory gaps, and whole worlds reopened. I met people who I'd heard of as characters in other people's stories for decades, and I saw a few people who I thought were lost to me forever. To my chagrin, I didn't recognize a couple men who came out of the house, even as one old friend was saying their names to me five feet away from them. We weren't super close back then, but I knew the 19-20 year old versions of them well enough to think they were cool. I would never have known the 40+ year old men if I'd met them on the street, even if they had introduced themselves.
Mr Smith-Park grew up in Boulder, and was as attached to his traditions of sing-alongs and fireworks at Folsom Field on the CU campus as I was for the community 4th of July events at Wintersmith Park in Ada, Oklahoma. When I hitched my wagon to his almost 30 years ago, he encouraged me to adopt his loyalties to the Folsom Field ways, and as a devoted CU student/grad myself, it wasn't a hard sell. I think there was only one time that we made it back to Folsom when he was in the air force, when the kids were little, and I'm pretty sure while his mom was still alive. We have been talking about resuming that tradition for years, and now that we are here, and both still living close to Boulder, we finally got around to doing it. I was expecting it to be harder. We parked at the same underground garage where I'd park for football games, which for a broken body like mine takes half an hour to walk from garage to the stadium on the hill. But as we pulled into the garage, we saw where the free shuttle was idling, and we hopped on it and within a few minutes were on our way to campus. We chatted with fellow bus patrons for the couple miles to the drop off point, and then we were on our way in. Daughter 2 and Foster Daughter 1 were waiting for us in the section where the marching band usually sits, with their respective men-folk. There were the sing-alongs we remembered (with a twist in the form of kids from the School of Rock performing some of it) and our beloved Ralphie the buffalo ran around the stadium. The lights went out suddenly, and in the twinkle of ten thousand cell phone flashlights and glow-stick accessories (spread out among thirty thousand people), the first launches occurred. I took one cursory photo to illustrate on the blog, and then put my camera down and enjoyed the spectacle. About halfway in, I took another few photos with the pro settings, and then lived in the moment entirely. The display was outstanding, with over 5000 individual charges launched. The finale was over the top, just like you want on a show like that.
No comments:
Post a Comment