...burn a dollar...

Jeremy and I are not huge supporters of July 4th, but we do enjoy fireworks. Fortunately, his cousin (actually first cousin once removed) Susan was in town from Nepal, so we were able to enjoy them from the balcony of May's old apartment. It was good to see Susie. She always is fun to talk with. Her friend Viva, who is her neighbor in Nepal, was also in town. By the time the fireworks came, Francis from across the hall was over, and their friend Azalia was there as well.

I could not believe the display that New York has! We could actually see two different ones from our vantage point, but one was far superior as we could see all three parts of it. The view from May's bedroom was even more spectacular. I had a hard time deciding which view I preferred. On the balconey, you felt more a part of the whole city and could hear the collective ahhing and clapping of millions of people. We had been watching, as dusk grew, people gathering on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. After dark, we could only see them in the flashes from the fireworks and hear that they were there, and very much alive. At one point a small boy yelled out, "I wish this was every night!" I think many people replied to him, "Me too!" The fireworks were like neurons, and petri dish growth, and flowers, and things from every part of nature come to life in an extra huge version of gold, violet, red, blue, white, green, orange explosion! I was fighting back tears at how something so simple can be so beautiful. It brought lots of memories, especially from when I was a kid, to the surface. If you were to have asked me at that moment, I probably would have told you my childhood was terrific, because I could only remember those sticky, summer nights where bug repellent, barbeque smoke, and fresh cut grass are wrestling to have the largest smell. Fireflies are creating there own light display every night, and don't seem to mind being caught every once in a while. You can stay up later, because the sun doesn't ever want to set, and there is no worry of having to go to school the next day. There are more excuses than ever to eat candy, drink soda, and nosh on things all day long. That's exactly what we did at Suzie's! Mmm...cookies, grapes, Coke, hummus, potato chips...I wish we could have stayed in that moment longer, but...it's good to know that there are so many moments in time where I feel that...I don't want to leave or ever have it end. Luckily, I try not to have much space at all in between those times. Those are the times when I don't worry about anything, and I don't get so frustrated that I proclaim, "Ugh! I can't stand people!" There probably needs to be less of that in everyone's life.

...family matters...

We finally downloaded Powerpoint so that we could look at the cd of family photographs and stories that we got from Rick, via Arno (Jeremy's second cousin I believe) It is an extremely long slideshow, but you just don't want to stop! I'm interested in any person's photograph collection, but this was extra good because it's Jeremy's family. I think there is somewhere around six to seven hundred photographs spanning from 1900 to 2002/3! Arno had, and still has, a huge task ahead of him, and the end result is great!!! I think this is how I may want to organize all of the stuff for my family...we'll see.