Entry #10: FIREWORKS

FIREWORKS

It's New Year's Eve, and I am waiting to see fireworks tonight. Real ones, not on television. I like the ooo's and  ahhhh's of the crowd. I enjoy the anticipation as each rocket shoots into the night. Will there be a dandelion of red, or green, or blue sparks? A weeping willow of white stars? A thicket of twirly shrieking whistles?

As far as I'm concerned, fireworks are good for any occasion. What a way to celebrate an anniversary, or a birthday. How great it would be to have fireworks at your wedding! I can even imagine a funeral with a few white rockets shot into the sky.

As New Year's fireworks begin their journey around the globe, I am reminded of the fireworks I enjoyed as a child. All my life - until I went to college -  my family would spend summers in Rhode Island, and every so often we would be permitted to go to the Fourth of July fireworks at The Dunes Club in Narragansett, RI.

The Dunes Club is the greatest place in the world (and I NEVER exaggerate). It has the most wonderful beach you've ever seen, with the best waves for bodysurfing. The club itself is all grey, weathered wood with long walkways that are covered with straw mats. If you don't want to spend a fortune, you get a little closet in a long line of closets where you can leave your bathing suits and baby powder and boogie boards in between visits. There are little shared wooden shower stalls with freezing cold water you dump on your head by pulling a chain. This follows the "inversely proportionate" rule for rich people: they spend more to have less.

If you are really rich, you wait for someone to die and then you get a cabana on one of the horseshoe-shaped semicircles. Each cabana has "his" and "hers" changing rooms and a shower between. The water is still ice cold, but  you can warm up on a lounge chair out front as you chat with your neighbor.

When I was little, we were allowed to spend one day per summer at The Dunes Club as the guests of one of my mother's friends. It was the most fun I'd ever had in my life. We could swim for hours in the ocean, and get blue Popsicles at a little window without needing any money, and order a fabulous lunch in our bathing suits in the tiny walk-through cafeteria. The very old folks drank on the deck beneath umbrellas overlooking the ocean, or ate lobster salad at tables with crisp, white tablecloths in the fancy dining room with huge glass doors that opened onto decks overlooking the sea.

The Dunes Club is, of course, very exclusive. Most of the families could easily model for Ralph Lauren or J. Crew. The husbands show up on weekends and are captains of industry in their Nantucket red shorts. The women are all thin and blonde and laugh lightly. The nannies are slightly less attractive to keep the husbands under control, and the children are all tow-headed, active, and suntanned. Voices are never raised. Radios are unheard of. Good-looking young people in white clothes run back and forth to the cabanas all day with drinks. The distinctive blue-and-white beach towels are stolen at a rapid rate.

My parents could have joined The Dunes Club at any time, but they waited until their last child (me) was in college before they did so. Why waste money on children enjoying themselves?

They quickly graduated to a cabana for just the two of them. While others filled their window boxes with bright red and white impatiens and other sunny flowers, my mother stuck a plastic plant from BJ's in their window box. Most people had lovely chaise lounges with flowery cushions and a side table or two. My parents dragged in some broken plastic chairs and moldy coolers for their booze. Their broken-down furniture was extraordinarily inappropriate. Anybody with a cabana obviously had money, so apparently they truly did not care how crazy they appeared in a cloud of bright flowers and tasteful hydrangea prints.

On July Fourth, the Dunes Club hosted its own private fireworks display. My mother made the effort to take us only a few times when we were little, but what times they were!

We kids experienced total freedom while the adults all stood around like tree trunks, drinking and waiting for dark. We could run around anywhere we liked, totally unsupervised. The sand cooled down after sunset and was as soft as velvet. The stars came out and we would race around among the adults' knees.

Finally the most extraordinary fireworks would begin. A few desultory rockets at odd intervals brought everyone to attention. Then the fireworks began in earnest, with showers of gloriously colored sparks directly overhead. Occasionally there would be a bright flash of magnesium and a BOOM that would make your heart vibrate inside your chest. I loved those best of all, and thought they were thrilling. The Grand Finale always involved countless rockets all fired at once, Roman candles, a sparkling American Flag set up on the beach, and a deafening series of bright explosions.

"Aren't they WONDERFUL?" I could not help exclaiming.

My mother, who at the time fancied herself against the Viet Nam war - except for her investments, of course - answered drunkenly, "Well, if you enjoy the sound of bombs."

That was it. I was never able to enjoy fireworks again with the same joyful abandon - which is exactly what my mother intended.

I wish I could go back in time, but the arrow has already been shot, and it found its mark. I try to forget her words, but innocence lost cannot be regained.

Please treasure innocence where you find it. Shield and protect it, so it may continue to be joyous a little longer. There will be plenty of time for cynicism. Let innocence bloom in your presence as long as possible. It lightens the weight of the world.

And a happy, successful, healthy 2014 to all.