Another Perspective

At Rockland, Ter and I would stay up to see the Canada Day fireworks from our living room window. Since we moved to sea level, we only get the acoustics. Pop pop, pa-poppopop, popopopopoBANG! And so forth. It’s scheduled, so there’s no surprise when the explosions start.

One random Saturday night, we heard the same thing: Pop pop, pa-poppopop, popopopopoBANG! We wondered aloud what the occasion might be, since we knew of no celebration associated with July 9, then shrugged and went about our nightly routine of getting the bears ready for bed.

They weren’t bothered, either. One of them reminded me, huffing a little with displeasure, that there had been fireworks before Canada Day as well, at the home opener for the local baseball team. And I seem to remember a similarly unexpected display last year, something to do with Oak Bay perhaps, that I dismissed as simply more fireworks.

How fortunate I am to live in a place where Pop pop, pa-poppopop, popopopopoBANG! heralds nothing more sinister than an unscheduled fireworks display. It’s not a sniper picking off police officers or a religious nutbar massacring innocent people at a nightclub. It’s not civil war. It’s not an insurrection. It’s just a light show against the night sky.

A similar thought occurred ahead of a Snowbirds performance a couple of years ago (and I might have mentioned it in a previous post). The rush I feel on hearing the fighter jets’ approach is nothing remotely like what another woman in a war-torn country must feel on hearing the same sound. I was at work one day when the roar of low-flying military planes rattled the building and a co-worker asked me what the heck was going on. “The Snowbirds are in town this weekend,” I replied. “They must be practicing for the show.”

“I thought we were being bombed by Lebanon!”

She was joking, of course, but the sentiment has stayed with me. I can’t stress it enough. I can’t be grateful enough to live in a place where the sounds associated with war and craziness are a signal not to duck and cover, but to take the kids outside and watch the show.