Sounds of Celebration

My 10 year old son and I sat out on the front porch last night at dusk, where we can see and hear most of the action from our community's public fireworks display, as well as hundreds of amateur attempts from backyards throughout the residential blocks that make up our West side Chicago neighborhood of Galewood. Above the tall trees that line our streets we can make out the tops of the higher multi-colored bursts launched from the local schoolyard, and the explosions of illegal but tolerated cherry bombs, M-80's and roman candles create a constant din of violent sound that seems to last all night.

It's awesome, the sound. I closed my eyes and tried to distinguish one from the other, to see if I could identify the origin of each individual explosion. My son was jumping up and down the front stairs, his 10 year old body unable to contain the energy created by this sensory overload. I was picturing families in their yards, finishing up their hot dogs and burgers from the grill, watching dad lighting fuses on the contraband he smuggled in from Indiana, and then running back to safety while they unpredictably exploded or shot into the air and then exploded. They would all yell, or clap, or bury their young faces in their mother's chest to hide from the bright balls of fire flying above them. Certainly each sound I could hear was one of celebration, and joy, and family.

My sometimes cynical son saw it differently, as he usually does, and his observation startled me out of my daydreaming.

"I bet this is what Iraq sounds like." His nervous smile indicated he wasn't convinced that his clever insight was a realization he was happy to have made. He understands the war only as much as a 10 year old can, and he doesn't need to understand the reason or the politics to know that death is involved, and that the soldiers being wounded and dying are members of families just like our neighbors'. And just like his.

"Yeah," I said. "I bet it sounds exactly like this."

He stopped jumping, and his smile turned to a look of confusion and sadness. He sat down next to me on the steps, inching his now quiet body right next to mine.

"Is the noise bothering you?" I asked.

"No, I'm just listening with different ears."

We sat in silence. It wasn't necessary to discuss what we were both thinking, there was no need to try to work out our feelings about this. We just sat and listened. We weren't laughing and gasping anymore, we were imagining what it would be like to hear the constant explosions and know that they are meant to kill people, and that the really close ones were meant to kill us.

I'm not anti-American and I don't wish to dampen any opportunity for celebration, but as I considered this country's current involvement in a war that so few of us support or understand, I hoped that amidst our artillary simulations and singing of songs about "bombs bursting in air", that my 10 year old son wasn't the only one this 4th of July listening to the sounds of the fireworks with different ears.