Celebrating Freedom

I'm sitting in a lawn chair next to family, friends and half the neighborhood staring up at the sky.  With years of experience, JB, our boys are our neighbors are lighting fireworks with perfect choreography.   My neice and nephews have little orange squishy ear plugs in their tiny ears as they sit on my brother's lap watching the sky.  Dozens of kids are wearing glow in the dark necklaces and bracelets so we can tell where they are in the dark.  They have seen the show enough times they don't have to be told to stay behind the garden hose, our temporary barrier about twenty yards from the launch pad.  One of the fireworks soars 300 feet and shoots out long orange strips of light which look like a 3-D movie against tens of little white sprays like a forest of glow in the dark willow trees in the sky.  It's so cool and so close I laugh out loud and yell and clap with everyone.  It's one of those times when I forget how much  money we spent, or how grumpy I was putting the third coat of varnish on the deck, or what has to get done tomorrow, and everything seems right with the world.  Being surrounded by people I love and celebrating freedom trumps all of my worries and fears and for one evening I lean back, stare at the sky, and thank God for my life and all the people who've died or have fought or who are now fighting for what I have; freedom.