The Boring Old Hermits
In the 1950s there were fireworks on summer nights at Coney Island, and my father took my siblings and me to watch them from a Brooklyn neighborhood a couple of miles away. We stood along the curb together, filled with wonder, and afterwards climbed back into the car for the short drive home, maybe with a detour for Carvel. I curled up in the back seat looking outward as the sky went by...all streetlights and branches and midnight blues...a sweet summer sleepiness, radio hum, Daddy at the wheel. I felt utterly happy and safe.
Years later, in the 1960s, I took my little brother (sixteen years younger than me) to watch a booming fireworks display on Long Island, unprepared for his reaction, which was not of wonder but anxiety. When it was over, we exited the congested parking lot in a slow procession, and it all just seemed like a whole lot of trouble, especially when he offered his critique: "I didn't like those explosions."
It reminded me of how my sister Marlene always cried at the sight of clowns. I began to see how such things depend on circumstance and context, and more than anything, on what's going on inside.
Fast forward several decades. I was living with my husband and our daughter at a trailer park in North Laguna Beach, and the newly designated Crystal Cove State Park was basically our backyard. By now we had our own Fourth of July tradition, which was to climb a certain hill at dusk (despite the park being officially "closed"), seat ourselves on the ridge, and watch the fireworks all along the coast, from San Clemente to Long Beach, as far as the eye could see, but mostly in Laguna just below us.
It was magical and special, our own private viewing. The photo above is from one of those very evenings, our intrepid little girl leading the way, Monte with the purple Crazy Creek chair on his back. At this point it was clear to me that fireworks were best enjoyed like this, from some distance, minus crowds.
But we eventually moved, with an interim residence in Solvang where we went to the more community-oriented Fourth of July fireworks shows at the Santa Ynez high school athletic field. People enjoyed picnics on blankets as they waited for dark, teenagers promenaded, watching each other not watching each other, neighbors waved or paused to visit, announcements and patriotic music blared. It was all very social and festive, culminating in dazzling bursts of fireworks, and the inevitable addendum of a crawling exit from the parking lot. It was sort of fun when we lived a few minutes away.
Finally we made a home at the ranch, a semi-wild place that is as wonderful as it is inconvenient, and where a young girl might be quite happy much of the time, but might also feel intensely lonely and isolated from her peers. She was a good kid - studious, disciplined, and unusually self-sufficient. She endured the constraints of our off-the-grid lifestyle, alert to the moods of the solar panels, aware of battery levels, going outside on rainy days to turn on the back-up generator. She learned to recycle, and to use things sparingly, and to lose herself in books.
She knew how quickly the Gaviota crossing could flood and strand her on one side or the other, and what it was like to encounter a mouse running across the windshield or a baffled and erratic bat disoriented in her room, and on Saturday nights how faraway town and friends were. It must have been hard for an only child, living in her parents’ strange, secluded reality. How could I have failed to realize how much she might yearn not just for occasional fireworks, but people?
Which brings us to the heart of this little narrative. One Fourth of July, when she was perhaps about thirteen, maybe younger, she suggested that we head into town and go to the fireworks festivities at the high school. Instead of embracing the opportunity to step out with our daughter (who would oh-so-soon be grown and gone, but no one ever realizes that while it's still unfolding) we could only see it as a hassle and would not budge from our inertia. We thought of the drive, the crowds, the been-there, done-that aspect to the whole affair, and our own lazy preference for home. We were not spontaneous or understanding or flexible or gracious, and we said no.
"You're nothing but a pair of …BORING OLD HERMITS!" she cried.
It's funny now but it contained anguish at the time. She ran downstairs and spent Fourth of July in her room, in tears.
At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, it's one of my most shameful moments as a parent. To love a kid sometimes means doing exactly the opposite of what you feel like doing, but that night we let our own desires and lethargy supersede her very understandable request.
Don't get me wrong: we were devoted parents most of the time and in so many ways, but for some reason, this event (and that pithy little label she bestowed upon us) haunts me to this day, and I sometimes even wonder if it was the pivotal moment that caused her to move out so early and to go so faraway. I'm even using this blog as a public, belated apology to her. (Are you out there, Miranda?) We were boring old hermits, and we blew it.
As I said earlier, it's all about context, circumstance, and what's going on inside. I'd do it so differently if I could replay that night. To add to our sweet memories of sitting atop the ridge at Crystal Cove, maybe we'd have had the quirky joy of watching our girl giddily venturing in the space between our family's picnic blanket and away-from-us, then dreamily watching fireworks, then settling in the back seat for the drive back home.