For Spacious Skies

The community high school football field is layered with picnic blankets. As soon as we lay ours down the kids take off toward the ends of the field and the people to play tag and wrestle.

Good thing I’ve dressed them in red so they stand out from all the other children dressed in patriotic colors.

For two hours before the sun dips, they meet new friends, they tumble in the grass and they apologize as Frisbees settle into strangers’ temporary camps.

We make this small area of turf ours for the evening and we wait for the fireworks.

We play some card games and dice games, we talk to old friends as they walk by and we pull out our sweatshirts as a July day turns to evening. As the sky darkens we gather the children to the blankets.

But Naomi doesn’t want to rest with us on the quilts. She’s been chasing and racing and leaping for the last couple of hours and she can’t seem to find the six-year-old control to stay still.

The community choir sings tributes to veterans, to America, to freedom and all eyes and ears turn toward a stage. All ears except hers.

Everywhere families are settling in to watch the sky move from blue to gold to grey to black. They are pausing. Stopping. Waiting. And Naomi: she’s just bouncing.

The choir sings and for almost an hour it is as if chaos itself has embodied her little insides and she cannot find the switch to make it stop. I hold her, I threaten her, I distract her, but nothing seems to work.

I’m going to put you back in the car.

You need to stop that this instance.

Naomi, just relax and be quiet.

The choral program ends with members of the military standing up to be counted among the brave and we all clap wildly.

“Naomi, help me clap! They’ve risked their lives for our country.”

By now she is sitting/bouncing/writhing in my lap but she looks around and claps.

Then, a burst of bronze and blue explode above us. And then an explosion of green and pink. And more gold and silver and light without color.

The six-year-old is captivated. Her body relaxes into my lap. Her arms become heavy. She rests her head on my chest and stretches out her legs calmly.

She tips her face upward toward the sky and watches.

The chaos outside has canceled out the chaos on the inside. She can relax because someone else is in charge, someone else is taking care of it and someone else is letting the valve release the explosions.

It doesn’t have to happen inside her because it’s happening in the sky: this writhing, impatient, chaos-infused child rests.

I put my camera down. I’m not taking good enough photos of the fireworks anyway and I’d rather capture this in my mind and heart rather than fiddle with my camera and miss it all.

“O beautiful, for spacious skies {indigo and violet explosions up above}

For amber waves of grain. {gold and auburn lights up the world}

For purple mountains majesty {red, red and more red}

Above the fruited plain {green and chartreuse and green again}

America, America God shed His grace on thee…

And now I’m captivated. Captivated that simple sky-born pyrotechnics can have such an effect on me. Captivated that all the energy in my daughter has been replaced by a simple fireworks show. And I’m captivated that there is such beauty in the middle of the city, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a football field.

The July sky that captivates us is both simple and chaotic. It is just enough wild to allow her to relax and just simple enough for me to find new beauty through the eyes of my girl.

Happy Fourth of July, friends!