Choreography

Our long-term paralegal has three grown sons. I have known the boys (now men) their entire lives. The middle son is an electrical lineman - he’s a big person with long hair and a beard and is the quietest, most reserved member of the family. Not long ago he bought twenty acres in rural Ohio and put a mobile home on it - he lives there with his girlfriend and their baby, Rosalie. His hobby is fireworks and he’s gotten way into it - he obtained a commercial license to buy the fancy fireworks and the last few years he has put on a fireworks show for about 100 invited guests.

This is not a small thing. He has to get prior approval of the site from the ATF and the local fire department and he isn’t permitted to charge for the show. He and his girlfriend actually dug a small pond on the property because they are too far from any sufficient water hook up.

The evening of the party he pays for the local (volunteer) fire crew to show up and they bring the truck with the pump. He and his girlfriend rent a bounce house for the kids and prepare picnic food for 100 people. His friends and family walk around with beer and Jello shots for the adults and you can smell weed and cigarette smoke wafting on the breeze. Immediately prior to the show he dons a black fireproof suit - part of federal requirements - and shows us this sequence of lights and sound and color he came up with the year prior. We sit on one side of the pond and the fireworks are on the other.

My husband hates the party. He’s an environmentalist and the waste bothers him and he considers it a tragedy waiting to happen - the combination of booze and water and little kids running around and fireworks and that fact that we all have to park along a state route - well, he frets like a lawyer. But I was watching the show - so bright and loud and colorful - and thinking that this gruff, stoic person has all of …this ebullient energy inside and he found a way to express it. I congratulated him after the show and told him the only thing missing was music. I could see the wheels turning for next year.