Big bang theories from a fireworks lover

I’ve been bombarded with fireworks since my birth. It was during my first Fourth of July on Earth that my father resurrected his secret stash of firecrackers from the out-of-reach dresser drawer and set them off on the bricks in our backyard. To this day, he still has a few of those ear-piercers tucked under his white linen handkerchiefs, and every year I fear he may try to light one “just to see if they still have any pop.”

It was hard to love those firecrackers, their destruction devoid of color or sizzle. As a child, their noise doubled me over, my plugging fingers protecting my eardrums, a companion to the beagle who hid under the sofa. I preferred fire-works, the bombs bursting in air, sending silent showers of light cascading through the night sky.

Come summer solstice, makeshift fireworks stands seemed to magically appear on virtually every street corner. That’s hardly the case anymore; fireworks have been illegal in the city of Los Angeles for more than 60 years; in Orange County, only a handful of cities allow the sale of “safe and sane” fireworks. But community displays remain a dazzling spectacle, and a reminder of the power of light.

I have experienced amity because of fireworks. My childhood was spent in Pasadena, and on July 4, we’d gather with neighbors at the home of friends on Linda Vista Avenue, their backyard perched over the Arroyo Canyon with a great view of the Rose Bowl fireworks. For the price of a potluck dinner contribution or a homemade ice-cream cranking spell, we witnessed what others had to drive, park and push through tunnels to see.

I have been astonished by fireworks. In my early 20s, traveling by train from Los Angeles to San Diego one July 4, I sat truly alone, the sole passenger in the railcar as I watched people gather on the beaches from my window seat. After the sky grew dark, I was given the unexpected gift of light and glitter as the train sped by dozens of displays on the beaches south of Orange County. Bursting above the train tracks were trails of glistening color, and adult concerns melted away as I reverted to the child whose mouth gaped open, my nose pressed against the glass in wonder.

I have been ambushed by fireworks. When my older daughter was 16, I drove her and a group of friends to a concert at Dodger Stadium one warm summer night. The plan was to drop them off and return at midnight to retrieve them at the same spot in the parking lot, an area that I later found cordoned off by orange cones. I squeezed my way into the forbidden zone anyway -- nothing would keep me from my promise to be there. Unbeknownst to me and my companion, my younger daughter, this area had been reserved for the concert’s concluding fireworks display, and without warning, we were blanketed by earth-shaking explosions and a storm of fiery sparks as car alarms sounded all around us and we hit the floorboards shrieking.

I have been assuaged by fireworks. After moving my daughters from the home where, for 14 years, we had been privy from our own window to a pyrotechnic display on the San Clemente pier, I suffered from anxiety over breaking the news that they would witness no such glory from the new family room in San Juan Capistrano. After I confessed to my children, outside the kitchen window of the new place, there arose a giant ball of light that at first appeared a little too close for comfort. This, succeeded by others from left and right, soothed me about uprooting my family. In our new location we could watch not one, but three cities -- San Clemente, Dana Point and San Juan Capistrano -- celebrate America’s birthday.

I have found perfection thanks to fireworks, and I no longer have to await the onset of July to attain it. When the team is playing at home, I anticipate the colorful conclusion to Friday night Angel games at Angel Stadium.

This cacophonous collision in an otherwise cloudless sky is incomparable, and my husband has discovered the perfect place to perch where I am so close to the blinding bursts that I have to rest the weight of my head against the palm of my hand to prevent neck-ache. Each explosive design is fatally fantastic, and I especially love the one that leaks liquid gold as it drips from the heavens. Pyrotechnically speaking, it’s da bomb.

Kathleen Clary Miller can be reached at [email protected].