Do I look like the kind of person who doesn't know how to have a good time?

Pretend it's the Fourth of July and it's been cloudy all day and you find yourself without any real plans because your weekend guests left unexpectedly early this morning. And pretend that this lack of a firm checklist for celebratory enjoyment is making you upset and anxious and more than a little grumpy because you become inexplicably manic during holidays. You have an irrational need to have everything go exactly as you pictured in your head, which is generally pretty unrealistic, since the pictures in your head seem to resemble something between a Norman Rockwell Painting and a commercial for Summertime brand lemonade, and your real life resembles something between Calvin and Hobbes and the part of the infomercial where the person simply cannot manage to make a regular blender work without clumsily spraying its half-pureed contents all over the kitchen. You spent the day chasing your toddler around a decidedly adult-oriented barbecue and wandering aimlessly around the touristy area of your town, and now it is dusk and you have bundled your child into the stroller and left the house to try to see fireworks, because it is the Fourth of July, and you must see fireworks because that's just what you have to do, because it's fun, dammit, and someday your child might ask you "Mama, why was the Fourth of July when I was 15 months old so dreary and devoid of fireworks?" Because it is completely reasonable to imagine that she might remember this day at all.

So here, you are, walking along with your daughter and your husband, and your big toe is throbbing and possibly bleeding where you stubbed it on the wheel of the stroller, and you know you are greatly annoying your husband by going on and on about whether you are going in the right direction or whether or not you might miss the fireworks, and being generally neurotic, but you can't stop yourself. And you look down to see if your child looks cold or upset about the loud booming, and she's sitting in the stroller, blanket up to her chin, and her little round face has the most delighted and astounded expression on it, and just then another firework goes off, except this time she sees it as it lets go its loud BOOM, and she says "wow!" in her little echo-ey voice, with genuine awe. And your husband jokes, "I'll bet she thinks this is what happens every night after we make her go to bed."

And you take a deep breath and you notice the white foam on the surf glowing against the dark water, and the shimmery trails of red and yellow light shining across the bay from the waterfront, and the fireworks exploding in great glittery blossoms above the lit-up boardwalk. And there are families sitting on the cliffs with their children, pointing at the sky, and teenagers riding by on cruiser bikes, and one exuberant fellow who keeps yelling "America! High five!" (okay, that guy was a little annoying), and you wonder how many more moments you will almost miss because you are too busy trying not to miss them.