joyful2beeblogs

In spite of the fact that I am a senior citizen, I still consider myself a child at heart. So why is it that before I go to a fireworks display for a holiday I pause and do the “old woman routine:” check the weather for temperature, rain, lightening, and think of all the things I need to bring for a 20 minute display of potentially dangerous, noisy, exploding colored lightning in the night sky? Why do I think, “Oh, well. I’ve seen lots of fireworks before, I can live without seeing this one. I just don’t feel like going out in the heat and mosquitoes.”

But when my best friend invites me to go, I immediately say,”Yes!”

When the fireworks begin, I am transfixed with awe at the wonder, beauty, massive, man-made colored, lightning like vision!! I stand there grinning from ear to ear; smiling with my eyes wide open, afraid I’ll miss something; and then I try to capture the beauty and majesty of it all with my camera. Although I have done this many times before, I am never quite satisfied with the pictures. How can one capture with a camera the beautiful blossoms of colored light, the booming sound of the cannons firing them into the air, or especially the excitement generated by real fireworks exploding over one’s head?

Why is this spectacle so bewitching year after year? Could it be my inner child wants to enjoy the glory of something only seen a few times a year? Could it be I want to be enchanted by the beauty of each explosive crackling, glowing sight? Maybe it brings back memories of fireworks seen with my family as a kid? Maybe it is the stirring music,”The Star Spangled Banner” that still gives me goosebumps!

As the park speakers play several songs, I find myself thinking about Francis Scott Key. Key wrote the poem during the the War of 1812. These inspired words, which later became the verses of The Star Spangled Banner, were penned as he stood on a ship, looking at the embattled Fort McHenry with the American flag still waving proudly, though tattered and scorched, cannons still shooting their payload of ruin at the flag and fort. What an amazing sight that must have been! I bet he had goosebumps too as he wrote his famous verses.

“Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”

So I guess my inner child along with everyone else’s inner child still revels happily at the beauty, glory and phantasmagorical vision these displays present. Each of us feeling that pride once more that we live in the United States of America. And next holiday with fireworks, I may repeat the same “old lady” behavior until the inner child wins out just one more time, and off I go with chair and insect repellent until I can’t go any more.