by G. Jack Urso
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Fireworks display over the Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY. |
I celebrated my last Fourth of
July in 1979. After the divorce, my mother sold our home on Norwood Avenue, which
she could not afford on her own, and moved us into a small two-up, two-down row house. As a
child, Independence Day was a day-long event. For a few years we hosted an
annual picnic in our backyard. Since it coincided with my grandfather’s
birthday, both relatives and friends of the family would gather. Fireworks were ubiquitous,
even if most were illegal. One year, I remember looking down the street and
seeing so many sparklers and roman candles lighted up in front yards it looked
like an otherworldly arc of light, transforming the usually quiet neighborhood
into a dreamlike fantasy out of one of my children’s books with happy endings
brightly painted in watercolors.
My mother never liked fireworks — the explosions reminded her too much of wartime Sicily. On one summer vacation in the late 1960s in Wildwood, New Jersey, the low-flying planes dragging advertising banners freaked mom out so much that she ran all the way back to the motel in a panic leaving me and my siblings to fend for ourselves until she gathered her wits.
My mother never liked fireworks — the explosions reminded her too much of wartime Sicily. On one summer vacation in the late 1960s in Wildwood, New Jersey, the low-flying planes dragging advertising banners freaked mom out so much that she ran all the way back to the motel in a panic leaving me and my siblings to fend for ourselves until she gathered her wits.
I wish I could remember where my brother
and sister were that evening, but the divorce fractured not only the bonds
between husband and wife but also with and between the children. Afterwards, we tended to go our own ways. My father's many affairs
and my mother’s full-blown, hot-blooded, Sicilian meltdowns caused a bit
of a scandal in our close-knit Catholic Church and school. My friends faded
away, as did my mother’s, and I withdrew into a shell of isolation. It was as embarrassing
and as uncomfortable for me as it was for her, if not more so.
I had been spending the summer
working with my mother in her one-woman cleaning business. She was always a bit
of an entrepreneur, even when serving in the role of a traditional housewife,
often cutting hair for neighborhood ladies to pick up a few bucks. She
once joined a cleaning product Amway-like pyramid scheme business called “Best Line”
and somehow managed to sell enough product to win a trip to Paris, France, much
to the consternation of those in the pyramid above her.
We cleaned businesses as well
as private homes, and since the only families who could afford a cleaning
woman were relatively wealthy, compared to us, she spent the days constantly reminded of what we lost
as a family as she scrambled to make a living the best she could with a sixth-grade
education.
This was the first summer after
we moved out of the family home and I was suffering Independence Day withdrawal
symptoms. No picnic. No fireworks. No friends. The only family was my mother
and myself.
We had been slowly learning that holidays
were mainly for families — intact families. That previous Christmas, less than a month after we
moved out of the old family home my mom threw a combination holiday and
housewarming party in our little row house. A handful of former
neighbors showed up, though my childhood friends chose
not to join their parents that particular evening. Just
a few years previous we had a houseful over the holidays. Now my mother scrambled for a few people to show up and pay their “respects,” as though there was a death.
Holiday or not, my mother worked
every day cleaning homes weekdays and a couple
businesses on the weekends. Even though she had to be at work at 5 a.m. the
next morning, I think my mother also felt that we had to do something that
evening. I had never seen the big fireworks display downtown at the Empire
State Plaza, Nelson Rockefeller’s massive monument to post-modernism, so we
climbed into our sunshine yellow 1971 VW Super Beetle crammed with cleaning
supplies and headed downtown.
Unable to find a parking spot, we
drove slowly around the plaza. We lingered long at traffic lights to watch the fireworks before being
moved along by a cop or impatient driver until we got to another light
and repeated the process.
My mother paused the Beetle at an
intersection just at the top of a hill and we looked at the fireworks as they
exploded over the plaza. The beauty salon she cleaned stood on the corner
opposite us. Once a hairdresser herself who counted actor Kirk Douglas’ sister as one
of her clients, she now cleaned up after the stylists. Her occasional advice on cutting
techniques ignored. Though barely into
her forties, my mother was losing all those things that gave her status in society.
Her husband, her house, her career, her future — all those things that
once lit up her life now seemed to have been as brief as the fireworks that
burst and quickly faded overhead.
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Fireworks display over the Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY. |
We glanced up to see the display reach its climax in a dazzling show of light and thunder. The audience's gasps of awe mixed in with the pyrotechnics, producing a calliope of sight and sound. Bathed in the dreamy glow,
we spoke softly about the picnics in the old days of just a few years ago. The
light changed to green and a horn sounded from behind, urging us to move on. My mother
put the car into gear. We turned the corner and went home.
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