July 1 is the kid’s birthday, he turned five this year. Canada’s too, one hundred thirty-seven, both the kid and the country are young specimens of their kind. Since I work (officially) for Sun Canada, I bailed out of Java One a day early to celebrate. Herewith notes on the birthdays and a dip into ecstasy.
We had eight kids over for the party which makes for a lot of noise, but it’s a cheery kind of thing. Afterward, we and the neighbors (their boy was at the party) sat in the back yard and generally chilled until they had to go do a family thing, and we wandered off to the ball game.
The game was a complete mad-house, partly because it was a beautiful day, partly because they had the only Canada Day fireworks in town. Our beautiful little minor-league ballpark was unaccustomedly jam-packed, the beer service broke down under the strain but it was such a nice evening that nobody minded much. There was no room left in the area we’d paid for, but we’re old hands and know how the stadium works, so we snuck into much better unoccupied seats.
And it was a fine game too, the home side won 2-1 with every pitch mattering in the last couple of innings.
Ecstasy · I enjoyed these fireworks more than any others I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot. You see, I was holding onto an excited five-year-old who’d managed to stay up till 10:30 and who’d never seen real fireworks before and I had to hold on to keep him from going into orbit. He stretched up his hands to reach the skyrockets, shrieked with glee at the bright colours, and huddled into my shoulder, hands over ears, when they set off the loud bangers.
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world...
