tree climbing, beads, watermelon, and fireworks

I decided not to post on the birthday-party-campout, since just about everyone who reads this blog was there and can remember it quite well for themselves.

Instead, I shall inflict my account of the fourth-of-July party on you all. Since some of you missed parts of it, I think this is a more legitimate use of space.

Yesterday, my family drove an hour and twenty minutes from our house to our friends' house. They live in a larger town northwest of us, and they had invited everyone in our church to join them for a fourth of July celebration, complete with potluck supper, volleyball, and fireworks. The country was lovely on the way there, full of light and open sky, like a Dutch painting. About forty-five minutes away from our town, my mother suddenly remembered that she’d forgotten to pack our hamburgers. So when we reached a crossroads, my father pulled into a little IGA by the highway, and my mother ran inside and bought meat. While she was in the store, we watched another woman leave the store. She climbed into her car, and the “ding-ding-ding” of the engine greeted her. “She left her keys in the ignition!” my father said. “I guess that’s what you do in this place." When my mother came back, she said that the cashier kept calling her “hon”.

We were the first to arrive at our friends' house, after the pastor's family. The men were busy barbecuing on three grills. I played catch with the dog for a while. Her sides were heaving with exertion, but she didn’t seem to care whether she hyperventilated or not. I would nudge the soggy ball onto a tennis racket with my foot and then heave it into the air. The dog would bound after it, jumping into the air and catching it before it hit the ground. After a while, I stopped in order to let her rest, since she obviously refused to take a rest herself. I slipped my sandals off and climbed into the mulberry tree by the patio. The bark was rough, providing good footholds. I reached a perch perhaps eight or ten feet off the ground and stood up there and looked down at everyone. Abi climbed up to join me. When other people arrived, we sat quietly in the tree, giggling, waiting for them to notice us. Dani saw us first, and she and Ben climbed up. Then Violin noticed. But Princess and SwanElf were seemingly oblivious to the fact that we were standing up there, laughing softly at them. They had on matching “cool dude” sunglasses, and were too busy greeting everyone else to notice us.

After our host prayed to bless the meal, the girls pulled lawn chairs into a circle or sat on the grass. The dog wandered around begging. She managed to sneak a drink from Beth's lemonade. I went over to check on SmallTerror1 and SmallTerror2, who were playing alone on the swingset. SmallTerror1 explained to me that she was Spidermangirl climbing on her webs. She pulled a ferocious face at me.

Eventually, Melissa escorted us girls indoors. We went down to the family room, where she showed us how to make beaded necklaces and bracelets. We sat on the floor, and Melissa put the beads in their little boxes on a couple of boards. She tied clasps onto the ends of strong thread, and gave us each a slender needle. After much deliberation, we all proceeded to make our own pieces of jewelry, each with its particular pattern. The beads were tiny, smaller than the head of a pin. It took some skill to thread them onto the string. In the process, we scattered beads all over the floor, like shiny grains of sand. Marigold and I both made blue necklaces. When mine was done, I went outside to watch the exuberant volleyball game, which was in full swing in a corner of the back yard. Even some of the more staid-and-solemn women had joined in. One of the men hit the ball into a juniper tree, and Boromir climbed up the tree and batted the ball out.

Then Meri and her family arrived. Meri sat cross-legged on the grass and fed her young niece with a bottle. I stood and watched the volleyball game with them until it was time for everyone to leave. The F's and S's were going back home, but the rest of us were going to the fireworks. I said good-bye to Princess before my parents called me to get in the car.The roads were thick with traffic. Once the cars were parked, we all walked over to the park where the fireworks were to be held. We had come an hour early because the Symphony Orchestra was to play for that hour before the fireworks.

The park contained a lake, a large creek flowing over the dam, a playground, and a small train which chugged cheerily over its rails, its one lamp glowing in the gloam. The evening was still and cool. Voices carried across the water. The sound of conversation and laughter was like the murmur of wind in a forest. There were people everywhere—fishing from the dam, splashing through the creek (two of the boys in our group went wading), picnicking, playing with sparklers, riding the merry-go-round, throwing footballs back and forth....

We stationed ourselves at the top of a little hill. Meri, Melissa, and I sat together. Our hosts had brought a bowl full of watermelon, and they shared it around. The watermelon was so juicy and sweet, the best I've had in a long time. It bathed my hands with sticky syrup. We chatted or sat silent, watching the sun set through shades of peach and gold over the deep green pond. Gnats bobbed in the air like the bubbles in a lava lamp. Someone gave all the younger children sparklers, and they waved them in the gloom. Saffron sparks fell onto the damp grass like dying fireflies. Boromir sprawled on a reclining lawn chair, and he and Brother2 read a book together. The stars came out, shyly, a few at a time. Whenever the train passed us, the younger girls would wave at it. The symphony played across the creek from us. They were far enough away that we could hear all the louder pieces, but we could only catch severed strains from the softer ones. They played pieces by Sousa, Gershwin, and Copland. People on the fringes of the park kept setting off small fireworks—all through the evening we caught glimpses of stray Roman candles, or heard the loud pop of firecrackers.

When it was almost fully dark, the real fireworks began. A flock of frightened ducks flew, quaking, away from the explosions. While the orchestra played the national anthem, the fireworks burst in red, white, and blue chrysanthemums. When the orchestra played our state song, the fireworks were scarlet—a red fan of flame near the horizon, and bursts of crimson, like quartz rose rocks, right above us. Melissa and I sang along. The orchestra played various military songs. One of the men, who was in the navy, got up and sang the navy song, and Melissa and her sisters sang the airforce anthem (their father was a pilot). The fireworks burst in lacy patterns, like golden snowflakes, or shed glowing leaves of flame from smoking trees, or stretched splayed white fingers across the sky.

When the fireworks were over, clapping filled every corner of the park. We packed up our chairs and blankets and walked over the wet grass to our cars. On the way home, in the car, we listened to the “Phantom of the Opera” soundtrack. Rousing music, to keep my father awake. My siblings and I discussed the story as the music played, trying to piece the events together, while the stripes on the road slid away to the rhythm of "The Point of No Return". Stars shone in huge curves, like the snouts of breaching whales splashing through the dark sky. Occasionally, fireworks shot up on the rim of the horizon. The earth was blacker than the heavens, and it seemed as though we were whizzing upside-down, a planet, along the top of the sky, with the bowl of the earth curving below us, sparkling with starry city lights.

It was eleven o'clock by the time we got home, but I wasn't in bed until after eleven-thirty, because I had to take a shower to wash off the watermelon juice and the tropical-scented mosquito repellant.