As far as holidays go, the Fourth of July has always been a pretty low-key one for our family. My DH has often had to work, and if I remember correctly, the BIG fireworks where we lived were rained out three of the last four years. This year, the planets aligned: we had great weather, a pancake breakfast to attend (the cultural significance of which I didn’t understand until this year), sweet decorations for the bike parade, and even a three-day weekend for DH, who celebrated by buying fireworks for our kids for the first time. For the first time since we had kids, the holiday felt like a big deal.
By the time Friday night rolled around, the kids were all keyed up, too excited to sleep, too excited to wait until the actual holiday to start blowing stuff up. Once it got dark, the three big kids sat shivering in the driveway, eyes filled with exhilaration as gunpowder chickens laid fire “eggs,” flowers changed from orange to green to blue to red, and something called “Lightning Flash” burned our retinas if we looked directly at them. By the time we got inside, one of the neighborhoods down in the valley was having its fireworks show, so we all huddled in my seven-year-old’’s bedroom window and watched, oohing and aahing over the booming sound, the special effects, and the spectacular colors. On Saturday night, we celebrated with more fireworks in the driveway, but this time I noticed that the kids didn’t giggle and squeal the way they had the night before. When we all crammed into the window above my bathtub to watch three different displays, all running simultaneously, the kids jockeyed for position and squabbled instead of commenting on the colors and the shapes. A couple minutes into the show, we sent the boys to bed without a fight. Then I got in bed myself.
Just two nights and we’d all had enough fireworks to last until next year. They weren’t special anymore.
I spent Saturday night thinking some of the other things that had once been exciting, but soon lost their sparkle: the new jeans that made me strut the first time I wore them, but soon became a staple of the everyday lineup; the spinning class that soon changed from an invigorating challenge to one more thing on my to-do list; the sleepless giddiness over a positive pregnancy test that turned into the daily dread of facing all-day nausea, the new car I was nervous to drive off the lot that’s now just another means of transportation.
We moved a month ago, and every day I wake up feeling grateful: for our neighbors and our ward, for the friends my kids have made, for living close to family, for my DH’s job, for the home we live in, for seasons, for a pretty canyon in which to run, for the mountains outside my window. I know I’m lucky to wake up every morning filled with contentedness.
But if I’ve learned anything over the last 30-some years, it’s that I can get used to anything. Pretty soon the home, the ward, the family, the canyon will all seem commonplace and ordinary, just like the second night of fireworks, just like the no-longer-brand-new car. And I hate that. I don’t want to lose my sense of contentment and the gratitude I feel for this blessing in my life.
So how do I hold on to it? How do you?
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