The four day weekend had been spent on one thing: house work. It wasn’t exactly the weekend of R&R that it could have been, but it was productive, and, all things considered, necessary. With the fast approaching birth of our daughter, we had a lot to do. And being the over achiever that I am, after we started painting the nursery, I decided we should paint all the other bedrooms and great room so that my wife, Nicole would actually enjoy staying home everyday with our newborn.
But we finally reached Tuesday, July 4th that year, the reason for the long weekend, and the time had come for well deserved relaxation. That afternoon, we went and spent time with my parents and aunt for some good food and swimming. Later in the evening, stomachs full and relaxed from the soak, we decided that it wouldn’t be Independence Day without fireworks, so we all piled in the car and drove to a park where my family and I watched fireworks growing up. The tradition felt different, though. First off, this was the first time I actually drove the family to the park, instead of my dad. Dropping everyone off at the curb, I went to go park the car. Also, and a bigger reason for the sensed change, this represented my first year married during the national holiday.
I felt… like a family man. Not just some kid who couldn’t wait for the thunderous bursts and pops of lights against the dark sky.
After parking the car (which typically takes quite a while due to the large number of people who enjoy fireworks from the same location, but I got lucky), I quickly made my way back to join Nic, my parents, my aunt and all the other families present to enjoy the spectacle. Parents quietly sat on towels and blankets in the coolness of the greenery while their children ran circles with sparklers in hand, eagerly anticipating the show. There was the usual chatter among the adults and the playful laughter typical of children. Then, with a whistling firework shooting up, up, up into the air until it became a loud POP, the show began.
Right as the first firework’s particles faded into the darkness, a little girl joined her dad who had been sitting alone in front of us while she and her mother enjoyed the playground. No older than three, she hugged him and watched excitedly as the spectacular display unfolded before her young eyes. The show continued. Beautiful, bold, big firework after firework, many at the same time, burst into the sky and descended like pixy dust onto the heads of lost boys.
The dad began conversing with his daughter about the fireworks. He taught her how to “Ooh” and “Ahh” at the display, asked her which color firework was her favorite, and had her shout “Yeah” for the ones she really loved. As was typical of my growing fatherly propensity, I became completely distracted by the little cutie.
Since she had quickly told her dad that purple was her favorite, he told her to ask for those fireworks as loudly as she could. So she began, “Purple pwease…” but the next firework was red, and so the father told his daughter that they couldn’t hear her and she needed to make her request louder. “PURPLE PWEASE,” she repeated. Sure enough, they heard her that time and a huge purple blast exploded into the sky. She and her dad clapped furiously and shouted “Yeah,” in unison.
Watching her and her father interact, as fireworks lit the sky in flashes, I had a realization. Realizations were not uncommon to me. These slight epiphanies were familiar since discovering I too would soon be a dad. Like when I looked at our daughter’s already growing wardrobe and realized that Nicole and I would soon have a daughter that wore the cute little outfits. That we’d have a little person living in our home, crawling our floors in the various onesies. Or like on Saturday mornings, when I would look at my stomach and have these brief visions of my daughter laying on it or Nic’s, entertaining us merely by her presence and smile.
But this particular realization extended beyond my normal visions of a few months down the road. It was in this moment that I realized not only would we have a baby, but that our baby would quickly grow into a little girl, a friend, a person with whom I would share conversation. That before I knew it, she would answer me when I asked questions. That she would develop her own sense of humor and eventually start making jokes. That I would be her dad, the man she looks up to and whom represents the basis of her conceptions of all men to follow. Each thought came with every BOOM of the fireworks. And sitting there, I could do nothing but smile from ear to ear at the thought of what next year would be like, and the year after that, and the year after that.
At one point during the beautiful display, I placed my hand on Nicole’s belly. In that moment, the sound of the fireworks faded and, as far as I was concerned, no one existed in the park except for Nicole and me. I looked at her and said the words which had become incredibly familiar, “We’re going to have a child.” She stared back at me with the gentlest smile I had ever seen.
“I know.”
After that, I saw that we still sat among a large crowd of people and the fireworks came bursting back into earshot. Along with a familiar and adorable voice… “Purple pwease!”
