Bubble wrap and gunpowder…..

I’m happy to report that, for one more year, nobody I’m related to needed a steel plate in their head on July 5th. 

Our luck holds.  Fourteen years and counting….

Although Nurse Lexie and Chuck the EMT were both in the boathouse, we made it through the annual fireworks extravaganza at the lake without either of them being called into action. However, as one of several mothers/aunts/cousins praying and waiting for the madness to end, I will say that having both of them trained to apply a tourniquet was comforting. 

When our Boys-Who-Love-Fireworks were small, we did a lot of yelling from that boathouse. And that was with both of their fathers down on the dock supervising.  We were the moms up above screaming into the dark, “BE CAREFUL! GET BACK!! ONLY ONE OF YOU ON THE DOCK AT A TIME!!!” every darn Fourth of July. As the smell of gunpowder from the Grand Finale wafted across the lake, with visions of body parts floating toward the Big Island still dancing in our mom heads, we would look at each other and say, “Thank goodness that’s over for another year.” 

We still do.

This is because even the cautionary tale of the dude in Fargo a few years ago who literally blew his own head off (this really happened….Google it if you dare)  while lighting a firework falls on four deaf ears. Both young men just look at me and shrug their man-sized shoulders because they are young, and hard-headed and well, male. They do not see themselves as people who get their heads blown off. They imagine futures with heads.  Gee…thanks, Ventura.

Fireworks shenanigans aside, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about heads this past month because one of the more sensible female children in the family ended up with some pretty serious injuries to her own lovely noggin while rollerblading a couple of weeks ago.  There is a certain amount of irony to parenting, isn’t there? Sometimes you worry about bubble wrapping the wrong kid.

But they are all young and strong and beautiful, these kids of our ours who are in the Summertime of their lives. As their parents, the best we can do is hope that the bumps and bruises yet to come in each of their lives will heal, and that any scars that remain will be gentle reminders and not terrible, cautionary tales.

And mostly,  we can continue to pray that they will have the brains to back away from the fuses in Life they’ve lit themselves.

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