Terry made up this flowchart to help us next Fourth of July.
Ronan came down with a cold. Slight fever and chills and severe congestion. I’m convinced it’s because I bought non-refundable ICE AGE tickets a few hours before we discovered he was sick, but Terry insists that the tickets have nothing to do with it. His illness pretty much killed any hope of seeing the fireworks.
In our relatively new digs (11 months and counting) nestled between Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst, we’re experiencing our first Fourth of July, which means copious amounts of illegal and highly combustible fireworks. A few minutes after we put him down for the night the neighborhood sounded like a war zone – the pop-pop-pop of skyrockets everywhere.
While he seemed immediately quiet, and therefore asleep, I decided to check on Ronan. I’m glad I did – as I felt around for his head, a scared “Mom?” came out of the other end of the crib. Ronan had his pillow over his face and was gripping it tightly with both arms and legs. He was pretty shook up as we had left his window open because of the heat, and the fireworks sounded like gunshots. He was a little scared.
So I propped him up in the window, and we watched what were probably hundreds of thousands of dollars of fireworks go off all over the neighborhood. His terror soon turned to delight. Every time I thought it was over, it started again. It’s not like any other neighborhood I’ve lived in – this was full-blown, multicolored, un-ending professional-looking, 500-feet-in-the-air fireworks.
Terry took him outside while I locked the door, and we took him in a blanket around the neighborhood, watching the display. For a minute I thought we somehow were seeing the Macy’s display over the Hudson. But then I realized that Dyker Heights takes its Independence Day pretty seriously.
While we were out, we saw the remains of previous shootings lying in the street, their still smoking remains dragged up the street by cars, streaming little sparks as they went. Even though he’s only two I began to worry that he would try to set these things off when he’s older.
He flinched a few times from the noise but generally he was terribly excited over the pyrotechnics. He kept yelling “Firework!” every time one went off. As the clock reached 10 PM he didn’t want to go home.
When we did go home, he lay in our bed for a while, still looking for fireworks. We called Grandpa TT and Grandma to tell them what happened, but despite waking Grandpa TT up, he was too excited to tell them anything. He does love to listen on the phone.
As I type this, he’s rolling around in his crib, listening for the telltale sound of a mortar lobbing another star shell skyward. Which is better than being afraid of them, but I fear he will get little sleep tonight…