Miss Fourth of July

I loved her from the moment I first saw her, floating on a float in the Fourth of July parade. Her float was done up in red, white and blue crate paper and balloons with seemingly a thousand little flags, one of which she waved in her perfect little hand. She wore a crown and the banner said "Miss Fourth of July." She was everything good about summer. The sun. The long days. The pool. Lemonade. Sweet corn and watermelon. Baseball. She was greater than baseball. Greater than the moment the fat of the aluminum bat struck the Babe Ruth Little League ball label and made that perfect ping of a hit drove deep in the grassy gap of left center. She was better than summer sleepovers. Strawberries. The fan in the window that kept the house cool and lulled me to sleep under a cool sheet at night. The ice cream truck and its melodic song. Popsicles and the wet banana slip-and-slide. S'mores. She was better than the best s'more.

But all I ever saw of her was the one moment when she rode by wherever I was on Broad Street and on that float every year in that parade, smiling, waving at everyone with one fell swoop of her hand. I scaled a birch tree every year to see her until I was about 18 — when it would be odd for someone to scale a tree to watch a parade. We were about the same age, maybe eleven, when I saw her first. The entire world stopped and I took a deep breath. I don't know if I understood it then, but it was no less profound. She was all the fireflies in the world in the greatest and most perfect of glass jars. Every wildflower all in one beautiful person. And all I did was hang there and watch, hoping that limb wouldn't break, wishing the parade would stop and all of time with it. Wishing I could talk to her. Or that she would look my way and notice me looking at her and somehow in a look we would be betrothed, affianced, by mutual accord. 

She was after the tractors. Before the Belgian horses. Somewhere between the Daughter's of the American Revolution and Boy Scouts Troop 187 and Girl Scouts Troop 12. Before Dan the dancing bear and the Tiny Dancers Youth Dance Academy. Before the three high school marching bands but after the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the vintage cars. I couldn't care less for the pageantry of it, nor for the candy they threw which kids scurried to collect like desperate scavengers on the curb. Nobody, nothing else mattered at all. I wished to see her outside of the parade, but I never did. When I played baseball I looked into the stands. Maybe she had a brother that played on the opposing team. Maybe we would be at the grocery at the same time with our moms. Maybe we went to the same school and I just hadn't noticed her before. But it wasn't to be. It was as though she didn't exist otherwise, except for in that parade.

Years passed and the parade remained much the same, only she grew up and I grew up and instead of going with my parents, I rode my bike by myself, pedaling across town to get a good spot — the same spot year after year in front of the funeral home on Fifth, up that birch tree, or in the shade below. My parents thought I was "a little old for the parade" and didn't want to sit through the heat anymore for me to sit there and not even bother to gobble up the offered candy thrown my way. Then when I grew out of my bike, I drove myself in my old rust bucket car with the muffler hanging from a coat hanger. Then, in time, I took my wife and kids. 

Every single year she was in the parade. No longer Miss Fourth of July after that first year, but as a Girl Scout the next; FFA queen one year; the Fair Queen after that; an equestrian for several years on back of a palomino quarter horse with patriotic leg warmers and a braided and ribboned mane; two years in the marching band playing a flute; and since we have grown up, meaning turned 18, she has been on the float for her father's HVAC business, which she took over when he retired, I heard. She never missed a single parade and neither did I so not to miss her. 

I didn't need a new furnace or air conditioner from Gibson's Heating and Air. Of all the things that was old and needed replaced in my house when my wife and I bought it, they were not on the list. But there I sat with my beautiful kids and wife, duplicitous in my patriotism and penny loafers, still very much in love with this woman who I clandestinely grew up adoring. Who likely didn't notice me at all under that birch tree among the many faces in the crowd that lined the street. 

But there was that one year, of course, when she and I made sustained eye contact, though nothing became of it. There was no succeeding event to proclaim it meaningful, to catapult myself into her life. I didn't run the length of Broad Street like George Bailey in Bedford Falls and proclaim my love in such a way for her to see me. Perhaps it was out of fear of being rejected and, thus, the parade losing all affinity I ever had for it. And the Fourth of July being forever tarnished and soured in my heart as it would have been had the British won, so that the reverberations of the fireworks at night only would have served to sadden me like a dog cowering in his dark house, hoping that they'd pass and for the merciful reprieve of July 5th — only further to be tormented by the drunk neighbor who persists shooting roman candles all through the night. 

No. I didn't dare do anything drastic because I wanted her to remain there, as she was, like a passing comet perched on that float, forever a dream, perfectly preserved. And every Fourth of July in our small town that boasted a tremendous fireworks show, I sat there on a blanket at dusk in the fairgrounds and looked up past the ancient sycamores into the purpling sky and what was celebrated to me was not only the independence of this wonderful country where anyone can dream or be anything, but of my love for this girl who became a woman as I became a man in a parallel yet not otherwise connected existence. 

This woman who was better than apple pie and sweet tea and hot dogs and fresh-cut grass. And year after year, as I watched the Bengal fire and plumes of powder burst into sizzling incendiary confetti, and palm trees of sprawling ember against a canvas of a blackening night, I smiled and thought of her and how she looked that particular afternoon in the parade, every single year. And that smell, that wonderful smell of glorious burning phosphorous, was my love burning for her. It was her perfume. 

There would be a day, someday, that would come when she would not be in the parade, I realized. Or perhaps she would go on like those old veterans who dress in distinguished uniforms and salute as they passed on their float, appreciative of the respect they so richly deserve, one less seemingly every year. I feared the day that I would set my lawn chair out in front of the funeral home under that old birch and she would simply not come. Maybe it would happen when I became one of those senior citizens in the tucked-in polos and pressed pants pulled up above my belly button, drinking black coffee though it was a sweltering morning, and she would be yet another thing I lost because at a certain age life takes away more than it gives. It comes to collect the dreams it once lent us. 

The day would come sometime, I knew, when the marching bands would march by and the Boy Scouts tying their knots and the Girl Scouts selling their cookies and the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the reenactors and the long line of tractors rolling and the Belgian horses clopping and the vintage cars and the politicians schmoozing and grinning and the clowns honking their noses riding their ridiculous toy cars and realtors and bankers and the princesses and queens of this and that waving like bucolic royalty and all the rest of them — all but her. She would be extinct from my dream and relegated to a beautiful memory until time takes them, too. 

Perhaps this year would be that year, I thought more than once, especially as of late, after my two kids had grown and moved away to college and my wife stopped coming saying it was a foolish waste of time. But there she is, again, waving, smiling on the Gibson's Heating and Air float that adopted a polar bear as a mascot for reasons I do not know other than for the sake of a catchy motto that read on a sign on the float and on their few spring and summer billboards around town — Stay cool with Gibson's Heating and Air. And in the winter, the same polar bear on their signs with a winter motto — Don't be a polar bear, stay warm with Gibson's Heating and Air.

That poor bear trotted along the float in that white furry costume in near hundred degree heat and must have been miserable. Yet, the costume face had a perpetual smile that never relented and two big blue eyes that never blinked. His giant paw waving and the other throwing candy to the curb where a new crop of children scurried to gather it before the next kid got his grubby mitts on it, some charitably sharing their horde with younger kids who weren't such natural misers. 

My two kids weren't much different in their early years of parade-going. They'd gather candy and stuff it in their grocery sacks and get coupons for haircuts they'd never get, pizzas we would not order, dance classes they'd never take, and for vacation bible schools they wouldn't attend. And sometimes those bags would get stuffed in the trunk of the car and not be seen again until around Christmastime. And there I'd be in the mall parking lot, in the cold December snow, stuffing packages in the trunk and there the bag would be spilling out its guts all over the tire iron that I never put away properly. And I'd see a card for Gibson's Heating and Air with a number and that motto — Stay cool. And despite how much money I spent on Christmas or whatever was wrong with the world that year at the time, nothing was wrong then and I would stand there and smile in the freezing cold thinking of her. Thinking of Kelly Gibson. 

Someone said there was magic in the air on the Fourth of July. When I was a kid, I never knew that a team of well-organized conspirators lit the fireworks from the ground and up they'd shoot until they bursted overhead. My father told me they simply fell from the Heavens and exploded over our town and other towns to celebrate Independence Day, year after year, because God loves America. To celebrate our independence from the British and our freedoms to worship, live and do as we wish, within our own reasonable laws. To not be ruled by the doctrine of a King, but to be governed by each other and held accountable every election. God was happy about America being born and this is what He gave us to show us He was pleased. I like thinking of it that way. I like to think that these are not exploding Chinese projectiles, but rather hopes and dreams that people have that come true as they came true for everyone who created this beautiful country with the hope that it would be greater than England could ever dream. I have been guilty of being dreadfully optimistic most of my life. For dreaming more than I ever was practical. I simply don't see that ever changing. 

I was 46 when my wife left me for the dentist that employed her for twenty three years. I was her England. Only I didn't oppose her declaration of independence and there was no Bunker Hill, or Paul Revere's ride, or Boston Massacre in me. There was no Washington crossing the Delaware or the surrender of Cornwallis. There was a simple packing of the ship and a fare-thee-well, so long. It was never meant to be. I suppose it was one of those dreams that life collected that I was once lent. I felt about the same losing my wife as I did when Blockbuster Video closed its doors and VHS became obsolete. Life took those, too — from all of us. Ho-hum. 

Fate plays its hand now and then and we are its flesh and blood pieces. We are the little carved pawns and bishops and rooks on a chessboard that get moved now and then to set up the next move, or to respond in kind to the move of another piece before us. My ex-wife moved to Florida and my two kids paid me a sympathy visit, my daughter organizing their joint effort. They came home from college and roomed in their old rooms, perhaps because they felt I wasn't going to take my independence well. Rather, I was a beaten England licking my wounds back over their Atlantic. But when they felt they had satisfied their obligation and I was in suitable spirits, and when their term in college beckoned them to return whether I was or not, they left and I was alone in a house that was too big and too old for one person. 

It was sometime in late August, just after they left, when the air conditioner went kaput. In the dog days of summer, as they say. I thought of that polar bear with the perpetual grin. With the wide-open blue eyes that never blink. Trudging along in the parade, despite the sweltering heat. I was that polar bear, suddenly. Disgruntled and sitting in my living room, sweating, clinging to an ice cube that was the world's last glacier. 

I called Gibson's Heating and Air, of course. I imagined how surreal it would be if she answered the phone and I heard her voice for the first time in my moment of need. But, of course, a receptionist answered and said she would have someone come out tomorrow morning and have a look at it and give me some options. I was prepared for a guy named Chuck, or Steve, or even that polar bear. But instead, when the van pulled up and I was sitting on the front porch swing texting my daughter that I was okay and mom's betrayal didn't hurt like she thought it should hurt, that it was meant to be, much to my daughter's chagrin as a non-believer in fate and such things, I looked up to see a lady in that white van, smiling up at me from the curb. Sunlight pooled in her eyes. I would be lying to say that I didn't recognize her. That I didn't know every angle of her face and every glimmer of her big whisky-colored eyes. So I will not lie.

"You must be Mr. Harper," she smiled warmly as she walked up the walk and shook my hand. She looked like Dorothy in Oz for a moment and I must have appeared to her like the Lion — a nervous bundle of fur and nerves such that I was. Holding her hand a little too long when we shook because I forgot to let go. I didn't want to let go. "I am Kelly Gibson."

"Please. Call me Ray."

"Ray Harper," she repeated wistfully, smiling ecstatically. She was looking up at the house the way an alien might her ship before spilling her secret there on the sidewalk with her clipboard in hand. 

"I don't normally do house calls, Ray," she admitted, "but when I saw the address, well, I had to do this one myself. I grew up in this house! My parents owned it for 40 years! It broke dad's heart to sell it, but mom wanted to move out of town. She's a country girl at heart so that is what they did. They're both in their nineties now. Still living out of town. Riding horses. I've wondered about this place for so long!"

I was still in shock and don't know that I comprehended much of what she said other than that she once lived here. Grew up here. The coincidence was astounding. Had I known where she lived when I was a kid, I would have surely pedaled my bike past her house all summer long so often that I would have worn out the tires, hoping to catch a glimpse of her coming or going, sitting on the porch, or playing in the yard with her poodle. Maybe she would have had a lemonade stand and I could have stopped and we would have had that one conversation over fifty cents and a Dixie cup, that one chance to say hello that would spark something and lead to another spark and yet another until we strung them together to a life of happiness, pursued from our inalienable rights. 

She looked at me as though I was an alien, green with tentacles and antennas, oozing with slime. Then I realized she had asked me something. To come inside and see the house. "Of course," I said. "Please."

We drank lemonade and sat on the porch and she told me amusing stories of her childhood. What color this room was and that room. Where she hid when they played hide-and-go-seek. Where her swingset was. Where her hamster, rabbit and two cats are buried. Then she sold me a new central air unit, discounted for the sake of good memories, she said, but she could have sold me a nuclear reactor at full price because I said yes, yes, yes for I hadn't a single no in me. She promised the unit that I bought was the best she had to offer and I told her I didn't doubt her whatsoever. She seemed happy there, on the porch swing, watching cars pass down the street and the wildflowers sway in the garden in a gentle summer wind as dying bees bounced to and from flowers that would die with them. They shared a life together. A most fortunate and complimentary life like that I have long been without. 

I've never been the articulate type. The person who says the right thing at the right time. I've never considered myself lucky. I can't think of anything I ever won in a game of chance. But after she asked me about my wife and kids, I told her the briefest account I could muster with no effort to solicit sympathy and I asked her if she was married in such a way that it didn't appear that I was fishing or hoping for a resounding "no." The lack of a ring on her appropriate finger gave me a glimmer of hope. Hope, I laughed within myself, after all these years, there is a natural spring in me. 

She said she was divorced the way someone might say that they like hot fudge sundaes, or country music, or dew on the morning grass. I smiled awkwardly and just as I was about to tell her that I had been in love with her for forty years, I didn't. I kept that within myself. Instead, I asked her to coffee sometime — "sometime" that lingered too ambiguously, that I regretted right out of my mouth. But she allayed my worry by saying she was free Saturday afternoon. Then she said goodbye and I said "Stay cool," and we smiled at each other as she slowly pulled away. I hoped I wasn't smiling too enthusiastically because my nose contorts in such a way that it appears abnormally large like a battered eggplant. 

Between then and Saturday, I was blissfully happy, and after Saturday, even more so. Fate held me in its golden palm. When we married, shortly thereafter, she asked me to confess a secret to her, still I didn't confess that I had loved her for forty years. Admired her from the curb one day a year, every single year, without fail. But she knew. She said she recognized me when she came to the house that day. I was the boy in the tree. She said she had wished I said something before, but I never did. She said when she was in marching band she came back through the crowd looking for me, but I was gone. 

"Of course I was gone," I replied "After you, there was nothing to see."

She made me wear the polar bear costume in the parade every year after that. I was happy to do so and her brother was happy I did as well because he didn't have to. And despite the sweltering heat, underneath all that white fur, that perpetual smile, and those two never-blinking blue eyes, I looked up at her on the float, waving, smiling and looking down at me, radiant as ever. In that moment I realized that the world still has dreams to lend, even when you are older, and that dreams are what the world is made of. Despite the global warming crisis and the melting of the ice caps, I am the happiest, most optimistic polar bear in the world — heatstroke or not. My heart is pure Bengal fire.