Fireworks 2019

Last night I saw the best fireworks show ever. Our neighbors do this every year, but we usually have to go home before it starts because it has always made Lukas insane. He could still hear it at home, but it would be quieter and, of course, his barking and shrieking would only bother us, not the entire neighborhood. Zuza would just take it in stride, the way she always has.

This year was different, because they are both different.  Lukas has lost a lot of his hearing. It's harder because he can't hear the quiet praise and soothing sounds we make when he's upset. On the other hand, noise is much less of a problem. Innocent hikers walking by the house are finally safe from maniacal barking, and some trucks pass unnoticed. Woo hoo! Zuza's changes are harder to bear. She had to have an eye removed in January because of an abscess. The cataract in her remaining eye has destroyed her vision. This journey I'll detail in another post, but for the purpose of fireworks, her condition has made loud noise really scary.  She flinches every time there is an unexpected, sharp noise--hammering on the house, a dropped pan, a door slam.  The funny thing is that TV noises don't bother her. All kinds of mayhem can go on and she sleeps right through it. So, we left them home with a TV western blaring on the TV, and they were happy to sleep under a blanket in their best bed. And yes, they have a "best" bed.

So all that to say, amazing fireworks, right around the corner from our house, blossoming right over us.  Incredible colors. Incredible noise, including that sharp whistling that is usually followed by a soldier shouting, "Incoming!"

And suddenly I was a little girl, nestled up against my Dad, on the shore of Lake Winnebago at Lakeside Park in Fond du Lac.  We were talking about which of the fireworks we liked and which ones we didn't. Neither of us liked the "duds", ones that shot up and then, no colors, just an earth rocking BANG!

And who protected who in those moments?  My Dad came home from WWII shell-shocked--that term that became PTSD--and didn't go to the fireworks in my earliest years. I only learned the reasons after his death, in a random conversation with my Mom.  When he came home, she learned not to serve him coffee in a cup and saucer because his hands shook too much. At night he would cry out, and jump, and thrash. She said that she knew it would embarrass him, so she never mentioned it.

All those years, all those memories buried deep inside him.  No one ever let him talk out any of that fear, any of the revulsion he had felt at the destruction he saw.  He never told war stories. To my knowledge, he never wrote to the men with whom he served.  He said that he never wanted to return to the cities he had seen intact...and then torn up.  He never returned to London where he had grow up; he never saw Italy or France again.  And, I believe, he never appreciated the fireworks that I thought were so magical, if a bit unnecessarily loud.

This year, he would have been happier holding my nearly deaf dog on his lap in the quiet of my house, watching a western on TV.  I can't even begin to tell you how much I would love to have that be true.  The little girl I was still misses cuddling up to her Dad, listening to him explain magic.