I’d never seen my mom so determined. The past year, she spent most of her time in bed when she wasn’t at work.I’m still wondering how she never gained weight from all the TV dinners I fed her. But this past weekend, something snapped in her. She packed my sister, brother, and I into the Subaru and drove all the way to West Virginia. I slept most of the way there, but I remember waking up when the car stopped. I unbuckled my seatbelt, but she told us to stay put. She walked over to a hillbilly who looked her over for a while, kind of like he was surprised it was really her. It wasn’t until she unfurled a wad of cash from her purse that he finally flashed a gap-toothed smile at her and walked her around back. What was probably only five minutes felt like one because I fell asleep again. This time the slamming of the trunk shook the sandman off me; she wheeled a cart back over to the hillbilly and he waved us off.
That day was a scourger, almost breaking the record highs in both West Virginia and Baltimore. We should have foreseen the thunderstorm that was around the corner. The city appreciated its cooling nature, just not its timing. And none were more upset than my mother. She cursed her luck but also thanked it, because it provided her the perfect cover. It even allowed her to hatch her plan earlier. Around 7:37, when the sun no longer seemed to be hiding behind the storm clouds, she threw on her raincoat and asked my older sister to help her. My brother and I watched from the window as they got an old pop-up tent from the garage and propped it up in the driveway. While my sister kicked the water out of the puddle underneath the tent, my mom unlocked the trunk and ran over an armful of fireworks. My younger brother gasped when he saw how many there were, but that’s because he couldn’t remember the years prior. This was standard for us. Amazingly, she got them all under the tent without getting any of the wicks wet as she celebrated her first success.
She toyed around with the idea of angling them from under the tent, but she remember the one year we almost set our neighbors house on fire. If they hadn’t enjoyed the show we put on every year, they probably would have called the cops. So, my mom decided to wait. She sent my sister inside to stay dry.
It was an hour before the rain let up, but my sister ran back out as soon as it did without the signal for my mother and pulled the pop-up tent from over the fireworks. With two long lighters, my mother lit the circle of fireworks around her in two sweeping half-circles. When the last two in front of her started to burn, she jumped over them as the first Roman Candles she lit whizzed into the air behind her. The grey clouds turned into a rainbow of color above us as each firework boomed and pow’d. All of our neighborhoods came to their windows when they heard the commotion, still surprised the show was on. I’m almost sure I saw one couple applaud. I looked back to my mom, tears falling down her cheeks as she hugged and thanked my sister. For the first Fourth of July since our dad passed, it was as if nothing had changed. It was the perfect homage.
