If there’s one thing that I have learned to do quite well lately, it’s to look for gratitude as much as I can. Enduring high levels of physical pain can often sap a person’s will to keep moving forward, both literally and figuratively, and it also can blur one’s ability to have any gratitude for life itself. This year, I mustered up enough strength to join several friends in a venture down to the city of Boston with the sole purpose of watching the festivities in the sky on the 4th of July. It was there where I would find a wealth of gratitude develop within me.
It has been a very long time since I had tried to do something like that given the physical limitations that have plagued me in recent years. The last time came many years ago in a life that was once lived in the Washington D.C. area, where I would frequent the fireworks celebration on the 4th of July every single summer for almost ten years. In most of those times, where the heat index ran over 100 degrees, you would find me early in the morning setting up “camp” near the base of the Lincoln Memorial steps perched high atop one of the pillars that people were allowed to sit on. There I had a clear view looking straight across the Reflecting Pool upon the Washington Monument throughout the day. At night, as the sun set and the stars emerged, the fireworks would eventually light up the sky in front of that monument and over that reflecting pool dazzling me with their many colors and loud detonations. Even after sweating bullets for over 10 hours on most of those days, that fireworks display had to be the best show I would experience throughout the whole year for those 20 to 30 minutes it lasted. Many of my closest friends and loved ones, including my father and mother were all part of that experience with me at one time or another. Upon leaving the Washington, D.C. area in 2003, I ended that tradition.
I could cite many reasons why it took me another decade to head back into a major city to watch their 4th of July celebration. During the first few years I bypassed this kind of experience, I might say that it was due to the fact that I didn’t want to relieve the memories of those who had gone with me and were no longer a part of my life either because they have passed on or moved on. As more years drifted by and I became single, I would probably say my addiction based life got the best of me and robbed me of any desire to go enjoy that type of experience. But in the most recent years, the truest answer I can give as to why I continued to avoid a major city’s firework’s celebration on the 4th was that I just didn’t have enough strength on a mental, emotional, and most definitely physical level.
Thankfully, this year, 2013, I prayed to God by asking for the strength and then headed into Boston on the 4th of July with two close friends, after that decade long strike. On a day that was reminiscent of many of those heat stroke filled days I once endured in D.C., I set up “camp” alongside the river in Cambridge directly across from where the barges held the fireworks to be set off. Throughout the day I played board games with my friends, took many pictures, ate good food, had wonderful conversations, and laughed uncontrollably more times than not. When 9:30pm came, the main event would finally begin. The music blared forth and loud booms rocked the sky as many colors would once again dazzle me like so many long years ago. But the best moment I had came a short bit later as I heard KD Lang’s rendition of Hallelujah play just as the sky lit up with a huge technicolor display along with those pounding ka-booms. With tears in my eyes and goose pimples everywhere, I thanked God that I still had two eyes and two ears that worked as well as they did to enjoy something so amazingly beautiful that I had abandoned so long ago.
Through prayer and facing my fears over the current state of my mind and body, I found gratitude for that entire 25 minute show. I became grateful as well for braving all those crowds and all those times I had to be on my feet for what my eyes got to see and my ears got to hear. And I’m most definitely found gratitude for all the new memories I now have with two of my dearest friends. While the 2013 Fourth of July Fireworks celebration in Boston has now passed, I know I will always remember it with a huge explosion of gratitude.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson