Fireworks

Remembering Fourths past: an upstairs bedroom in Denton, Texas, between college graduation and graduate school at FSU in the fall, making a note that the weather was hot as a firecracker; seeing the tall ships glide by in the Bicentennial parade on television; pulling our old Volvo station wagon over on the shoulder of the West Memphis side of the I-40 bridge and tuning the car radio to the simulcast of music accompanying the fireworks rocketing up from a barge on the great river; walking in the humid evening heat to join friends at the Germantown (TN) city park as we watched our sons perform in the River City Band's concert, followed by fireworks almost directly overhead; going over to my aunt's house our first year here in Abilene and sitting in lawn chairs on her front lawn in the breeze to see the city fireworks display at the college campus three blocks away.

Tonight I could hear the city fireworks percussions, but not see them, except on TV, where the booms are muffled and the patriotic music swells over the concussions.

I remember one evening when David was in middle school, taking him with me to work at the Memphis University School library after hours, where I was uploading data to their computer catalog. As we left the building and locked the doors, we heard explosions. I remembered a drug raid in that neighborhood the previous week, and fearing that we were in the middle of a gun battle, we dashed back inside the building and dropped to the floor behind packed book carts. I found an office phone and called for help. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, with the fusillade outside still continuing, the phone rang, and the school headmaster explained that what we were hearing was a private fireworks event at a neighboring girls' prep school campus. I didn't know whether to feel relieved or silly. It was the only time I have ever seen my son really afraid. It may have been the only time he had seen me in the same condition.

My great-grandmother and her siblings heard the bombardment of the seige of Vicksburg from their farm in eastern Louisiana. On the evening news the fireworks smoke at the Abilene Zoo looked too much like the "Shock and Awe" smoke over Baghdad. I have learned what it is to be afraid of a bombardment, though I have never lived through one. I think about the women and children and old people in Iraq.

Today the "rockets' red glare" is not exhilarating. Too many images of real bombardments in Afghanistan and Iraq blend in a freaky combination with today's roar of the space shuttle Discovery taking off for the second time since Columbia disintegrated in 2003 and with the CNN report this afternoon of missile test launches carried out by North Korea.

When I think about the films I saw in the early sixties at Reinhardt Elementary School in Dallas, the fear returns. Even then I could read the story of the film: what chance did we have, cowering under our desks with our skinny little arms over our bowed heads, when the house on the film was vaporized by the blast from Los Alamos? What did the Civil Defense people think they meant by asking my parents to fill out a card choosing whether, in the event of a nuclear attack on our city, I should "remain at school," or "go home the quickest way"? What stupid bureaucrat even thought to wonder what would go through the mind of an eleven year old girl whose parents checked the second option, when on the days of the drills, she hurried home "the quickest way" with the curve of her notebook in her hand, with her heart in her throat, imagining the holocaust, wondering if she were walking home through an incinerated city, whether her home would still be there, or her parents alive?

At least in Quanah, Texas, we had had our concrete tornado shelter to put a barrel of water in. But in Dallas, I who did not remember living in a city heard the evening news, could not grasp that the murders reported each evening there had not happened in my neighborhood, found solace only in our collie, believed that she would defend me from the terrors of the city. What defense was there against the hideous knowledge of those terrorizing films, "Duck and Cover"? We made a flimsy pretense of preparedness, as if there was some reason to hope that anyone could survive afterwards. By the time I was 12, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I had read John Hershey's "Hiroshima." I knew more than the "Duck and Cover" films showed us. But the preparedness drills made me imagine that it was actually happening. Civil Defense taught me that there was no defense. No dog could help. No parent could help. There was nothing between me and the flaming sky.

Usually fireworks shows don't bring on visions of nuclear holocaust; but this week for the first time in many years, Korea said out loud that it would use nuclear weapons it has. I thought, when the Soviet Union came apart, that the nuclear threat was over. I know, of course, that the U.S. still has enough warheads to incinerate the earth many times over. I feel nervous about India and Pakistan and "former Soviet republics." But Korea scares me. Even worse, our government's failure to defuse this threat scares me.

Abilene is a military town with an important air base. Dark planes move across the sky periodically. Now and then I see a B-1 bomber, improbably graceful and lethal. Abilene folk are sturdily patriotic. There are lots of flags on July 4th.

My next door neighbor has a friend who put up a socket for a flagpole on her garage. He asked me if I wanted one. I said no. After 9/11, in Memphis, I had put out a flag. This year I won't. My neighbor asked me, "Don't you want a flag?" I said, "I have one. But I think I'm done with the flag." She looked at me, surprised. I said, "Maybe when we are at peace."

Kyrie eleison.