When I was a kid, my parents made the stars explode…
Well not really, I obviously exaggerate for the point of a good story. In reality, my parents were licensed pyrotechnics, we (including me…sorta) were the west coast team for International Fireworks of Canada, and my mum was the only licensed female pyrotechnic on the west coast. This made me exceptionally proud of course. I mean, how many other twelve year olds get to say their parents light off high-grade fireworks for a living? I was telling this to my best friend back when I first met her, and she promptly responded with
I’ve missed my calling, I wanna blow stuff up for a living.
Anyway…
Our family has long since retired from the pyrotechnics. It’s a dangerous trade, one where a second’s hesitation could cost you very dearly indeed. When my parents received a report that said that two very experienced ‘technics had been killed in a high-level show in Texas, and that such a thing could happen to anyone, they hung up their hardhats for good. I was thirteen at the time, and just old enough to start the courses that were needed to get my own license. I have always been a little sad about that.
But the time when my parents ‘blew stuff up for a living’ has always remained with me. I mean it would be hard for it not to. To this day I remain the worst person to watch a fireworks show with. So when the ship held in port last night to watch the fireworks competition that was taking place on shore (granted, from a very safe distance of course), I stood on a barrel in the kids’ area on the top deck and watched the stars explode on the horizon of Manila. There were a dozen passengers around me (though not as many as you would expect, most lined the more accessible areas of Deck 9) – but somehow I could have been all by myself.
It’s been a long long time since I could remember any of the specifics, but I remember just enough of how it all works. I can still recognise an 18-inch scarlet when I see one, no matter how far away. I can still recognise the orange peach shimmer of a Tropicana Rose. Those were always my favourites, and Dad used to try and make sure there was one in every show we did just for me, even if it was only a three inch shell. The thud of the explosion (always about five seconds before the actual firework) still makes my ribcage rattle in sympathy even though we were far too far away for me to actually feel it. I remember sitting behind the firing line, close enough that I could see everything my parents were doing, but far enough away that if something happened it wouldn’t happen to me. At close range like that that sound is like nothing you have ever heard – you don’t hear it at all, you feel it.
I still want to clap my hands over my ears at certain effects.
Watch your ears for the Whistling Dixies and the Screaming Dragons!
And we were too far away, too far away by a long shot, for the wind to carry it to us, but I smelled it anyway. That smell that carries with it Halloween and Guy Fawkes Day, and nights of 1 and 2 in the morning manning a broom that’s too big for you as you help to sweep up all the shell debris and break up the racks and mortars that you’d spend hours hammering together under the bright sunlight earlier the same day.
The smell of a hundred fun summers of Indians and Pirates
When I heard the roaring explosion that preceded the finale, I felt tears track down my cheeks, though I couldn’t precisely have told you why I was crying. Finales always remind me of my dad, who was known throughout the industry for his skill at them, they were his speciality. There was one show where everything went wrong (the same show is the reason my dad’s right ear still rings on occasion), and we nearly had to tear the finale apart and light it off shell by shell before the show even ended. For some reason, that’s what I was thinking of while I was standing there.
Someone tear the tinfoil off the finale! We’re gonna have to break ‘er up!
Childhood voices, echoing through time on the shockwaves of a firework explosion…
Things we love, never really leave us…