Fourth of July of Days Gone By

Another July 4th rolled around with crowds at the riverfront and fireworks at Louisiana Downs, just like last year and the year before that. And my phone started ringing asking what we were doing for the 4th and what to bring just like in previous years.

Only now my kids are grown and I don’t have three screaming little ones wanting to spend our entire paycheck on roman candles and sky rockets. I don’t have friends pulling into the yard unloading paper bags of explosives and little bodies that jumped into my pool while my husband cringed at pepperonis gathering in the skimmers and who knows what else was being added to the water.

We would all gather around the kitchen, squirting mustard on our bratworst and ketchup on our hamburgers, talking and laughing as our kids were screaming and splashing outside in the pool. No one had to worry, as my mother stood with her feet spread apart and hands on her hips, standing guard duty on all the kids and crabbing to all of us that if it wasn’t for her, our kids would all drown and we were all terrible parents.

Thanking her for keeping social services at bay, we would all give her a hug and leave her outside to the mosquitoes and the water guns, knowing she was our own personal lifeguard. We could then go back inside and enjoy ourselves in the coolness while she was stuck outside in the heat, complaining up a storm, but secretly feeling indispensable and loved.

The kids would leave a trail of water from the back door as they came in for the hundredth time to ask if it was dark enough yet to start lighting the fireworks, and we would point at the sky for the hundred and first time and tell them to go swim some more.......And make sure and splash MiMi so she wouldn’t feel left out.

Then darkness would finally fall, and all the dads would rush out with automatic lighters to demonstrate to the kids what seasoned explosive experts they were while we women stood back and hoped we would not be spending the next several decades with men that were missing body parts. Sulfurous smoke would choke us all, while not smokey enough to keep the mosquitoes at bay, and cans of Off were passed around to coat us all in a greasy mess. Babies would cry, men would slip on my wet floor on the way into the bathroom, out-of-town guest, not used to legal fireworks, would mishandle roman candles and shoot fireballs in their own kids’ hair to end the evening being beat up by their wives.

Little paper chickens would lay hissing, sparkling eggs to the delight of the little girls and the boys would ooo and ahhh at the black snakes as they squirmed on the pavement and the boys pointed out that they looked like "poop." Drinks were passed around, cigars were lit, explosives were fired, my mother would throw up her hands and, telling us we were crazy, retreated her frustrated, soaking wet, mosquito bit self into the house.

We would end the evening with overstimulated screaming kids back in the house. Burned, cigar smoking, sulfur smelling men came back into the kitchen for watermelon cake, and I would push back my sweaty hair from my soot stained face and wonder when it would end. Then, thankfully, Louisiana Downs would start their fireworks display, and I would push everyone into the yard to watch, and refuse to let them back in. That always helped end the evening on a pleasant note.

And now, one son leaves for a party, the other takes the girlfriend to the riverfront. My daughter is content to have a friend over to swim. So my mother stands on my porch with her hands on her hips and no one to yell at, our friend brings over a plate of bratworst that we sit quietly and eat, and my husband shoots a few sky rockets and manages to not end up in the emergency room with third degree burns.

It’s quiet, it’s peaceful, I don’t get overtired and don’t trick anyone out the front door. But as I look down at my half eaten, cold bratworst, I remember the chaos and the sulfurous smell. And to have all that calamity and smokey stink back for one more round, would be the sweetest smelling 4th of all.