When the fireworks ended my father would hoist me up on his shoulders so that we could run and weave through the crowds toward his car, leaving my mother and brother to try to keep up with us. He and my mother would get into a fight over who was driving home and my father would always win. I would shut my eyes in the darkness of the back seat and recite Hail Marys the whole way home.
After my father broke his back we stopped going to see the fireworks. Instead, he'd sit in his worn-out reclining chair drinking more than usual. He'd sing loud and off-key to the patriotic songs, yell along to the William Tell Overture and ignore my mother when she would hiss "stop" from the other room. "Come on," my mother would say, leading the way up the winding steps to our attic so that we could crouch behind the window and hold back the thin yellow curtain, hoping for a glimpse of the fireworks above the rows of triple-decker houses and apartment buildings in the distance. "There's one," she'd say when a thin line of light appeared in the sky. I never pointed out the fact that we could see them much better from the living room couch on the TV screen. To her, pressing our faces against the dusty attic window was salvaging some semblance of a happy holiday, taking us temporarily away from my father.
When my brother was a teenager he stopped joining us in the attic and instead went out with his friends. My mother and I kept up the tradition for a while. I went up to the attic for her and I'll bet she did it just for me, neither of us wanted to be there, but we were unable to break the habit. One year when I was fifteen, I went into Boston with my friends to sit in the Common and watch the sky light up. I left my friends and hopped the locked fence to the Public Gardens so that I could sit by the pond in the moonlight and watch the swans slowly swimming around. It was one of the most beautiful and peaceful experiences of my life. I wanted to freeze myself in time so I wouldn't have to return to the crowds, the slow-moving train, my parents at home.
When I started dating my husband I always imagined we'd find a place to quietly watch the fireworks together, but after the war the sounds that filled the sky sounded too much like gunfire and would send him reeling back into Iraq. I only remember one fourth of July that we spent together-- we watched the fireworks on TV. The local station in Georgia was showing the Boston Pops celebration. We didn't have cable and the one channel that came through would cut out every minute or so. We sat together, drinking, missing home.
Last year, just a month after my husband left me, I didn't want to be alone so I spent the night at my brother's house. My niece was just two at the time and we planned to take her somewhere to see the fireworks. She fell asleep and my brother dozed off on the couch with a beer can perfectly poised in his hand just as my father did so many times. My sister-in-law and I quietly watched them on television.
As I prepare to head to my brother's house for a barbeque today, I vow to let go of habit. I can predict exactly how the night will turn out: my father will buy too much food and barely eat any, choosing instead to drink beer after beer until he can barely stand up and says things that he won't recall and I'll struggle to forget. My mother will look angry and defeated, then abruptly decide when it's time to go home where she'll put on her nightgown and whittle away the hours reading or, if my father starts a fight, she'll go to bed. My brother will eat too much and grab his stomach, sigh, and point out how much weight he's put on. He and my sister-in-law will plan to go to a parking lot nearby to watch the fireworks, maybe they'll make it or maybe my brother will fall asleep on the couch again like last year.
For years I have been perpetuating this cycle by being a passive participant in family gatherings, not just on the fourth of July, but every time we get together. I find it too easy to slip back into my old, depressed, silent ways when I see that things haven't changed, that my brother and his family are living out a cycle much too close to the one we witnessed growing up. This year, instead of allowing my father to corner me and complain or spew out insults for hours while I stare into the distance I vow to do something different-- say something, move away, go home. When my brother asks if I want to watch the fireworks with him I will politely decline. I realize now that I don't even enjoy watching them and would much rather spend the night meditating, reading, writing, journaling, or just sitting quietly alone. It's too easy to do things because they are what we've always done, because they are tradition or expected of us. Today I will let go of who I was, who I have always been to my family, and what I would have done in the past. I will honor who I am now by breaking this cycle, breaking free of habit.
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