Fireworks

Daisy hated fireworks. It wasn't that she was particularly unpatriotic. She loved eating 4th-of-July hotdogs that carelessly fell to the floor. And she loved lying by the warm oven as the evening's apple pie browned. It's safe to say that she loved everything about the 4th except for the fireworks.

Around 9 pm, exactly when the navy blue and the ruby orange skies reconciled, Daisy could sense the inevitable. It was the sound, the repeating din of fireworks that drove her insane. She tried her best to cover her ears as she ran around the house screaming, but when one of your hands is actually one of your feet, this is a difficult task.

One year, the fireworks over Kailua Beach started a bit early, and Daisy was still outside. She tried her best, but her phobia and momentum carried her through the screen door into the house. She didn't just rip the mesh—she ripped the screen from its hinges.

I guess I'm a bit like Daisy. I often hope to have bad seats for a fireworks show: that the fireworks actually explode a great distance away from me. I've been to three 4th-of-July shows when the fireworks would explode directly over my head like I was wearing a hat made of igniting firecrackers.

Looking heavenward, the biggest of the explosions expanded wider than my eyes could perceive. It was as if God himself was revealing a part of his own body. The sublimity of the sky mixed with the pounding resonance in my chest made an experience thought-provoking, not celebratory. If a man-made ball of gunpowder could be that terrifying, think how big God would be. Or Satan.

Daisy died of cancer in mid-June 2006. Driving home from the vet, an empty dog bed in the back seat, I thought that the timing of the disease was the one silver lining: she lived thirteen years but only experienced twelve 4th of Julys. Daisy wouldn't need to rampage through the house with a tumor sloshing around in her chest. Daisy hated fireworks. And I guess I do too.

I didn't watch the fireworks that year. I just sat on the couch watching syndicated sitcoms. I listened though. I heard the starting slow cadence of ricocheting pops build into a grand crescendo of machine-gun rounds fired into the air.

I live only a few blocks from the beach, so the sound always shakes the figurines on my shelves, but the evening seemed calm and tranquil—and lonely. I had no one to bark in my ear as I held them, whispering, "Happy birthday, America."