Fireworks (and Family)

A few years ago, Tiffany's dad Gary started a new tradition. On the Saturday after the Fourth of July, he invites a few branches of his extended family up to his New Hampshire lake house for a cook out and a major fire works display sponsored by the lake homeowners' associations. Gary and his girlfriend Sherry (with the help of the rest of the family) do it up nice: grass fed beef and turkey portobello mushroom burgers, organic hot dogs, homemade desserts.

Until this year, Tiffany and I had only been able to make it once. In an unfortunate coincidence, Gary's tradition falls exactly two weekends before one of my family's biggest traditions in Mississippi. It's hard to fit in two cross-country traditions in a single summer month, and often Tiffany and I have to skip one or the other or both.

As the weekend of his party nears, Gary starts to fret about the weather. If it's cloudy, you can't really see the fireworks; if it rains, the whole display is pushed back a week meaning no one he loves is around to see it. Gary checks the radar for northern New Hampshire a few times a day and curses any clouds that creep into his patch of sky. This year, especially, he fretted:

"Well, girls, I have some bad news, there's a new state law banning fireworks of a certain size, so the show may be less grand than usual," he started.

That wasn't all. There was a chance of thunderstorms for Saturday and, worse, the chair of the lake's fireworks committee had announced he was stepping down after this year's display. The very future of the fireworks was iffy with a chance of non-existence.

Besides the fireworks, though, there's plenty to do. Like being thrown--flip-flops and all--into the lake. Sharing sandwiches out of a cooler. Getting up on water skis and promptly going back down again. Watching your girlfriend's cousin teach his whole family how to do the Dougie in the living room. Posing for a family picture so long your quads give out. Sneaking pieces of homemade spanakopita before it's officially put up for grabs.

And, yes, eventually, after all of that and more, there are the fireworks. We all troop outside to watch them, perched on Gary's back steps or sprawled on the damp grass. I held Tiffany's hand, and looked up so long my neck started to cramp. I like the ones that look like willow trees in the sky. The loud ones make me jump.

"Well, girls, hope you enjoyed the show," Gary said, as we packed our bags to go the next day. "And I hope there's something to see next year."

We fretted with him--for solidarity's sake--but we aren't very worried.

It's not like we fly across the country to see a bunch of colorful combustibles.