A tradition is a mirror, and mirrors can be slippery. At once the image is intimately familiar. There’s no tricks of the glass. There are no alternate versions of the clarity. The vision is clear, but its the eyes that are critical. But then the picture is entirely different to whomever should look into it. One day, one tradition, infinite reflections.

The sky is hours away from becoming spattered with red and blue fireworks, but there have been many testing booms heard in the past week. For Hazel, the practice booms are deliberately mean. It is hard enough to wait, the hardest part even! Reminders of the wait are everywhere, in Hazel’s opinion. Each corner has red and yellow bouncy castles with flags and fireworks for sale. The grocery store has towers of BBQ chips and red white and blue cupcakes and little flags to wave. But the nightly booms of others enjoying their fireworks seem to poke at her and bully her with the time she still has to wait.

Straightening her pleated red and white dress with tenderness, Hazel smiles at the previous nightly booms defiantly. The waiting is nearly over. Hazel was happy enough to continue the remainder of the waiting on the emerald grass with the promise of fairy sparklers and sweet corn that popped off the cob in her mouth. It would be easy to wait when she could dart among the hundreds of patterned picnic blankets and fold up lawn chairs, laughing and running with the other children until the lavender night turned black. In a few hours, she would see the sky painted and dazzling.

Jerry was used to waiting and patient enough to get through it without hardly noticing. He had had enough practice at being patient that he found his mind didn’t even need to search long for occupation. Surprises were overrated and at times came upon him so rapidly he didn’t have time to process them like an over crowded conveyor belt backed up and spilling over. The same way news moved on a ticker was how people talked over one another.

Today’s ceremony was such a delicate comfort after all of those vibrant surprises, which was what Jerry looked forward to the most. In each ceremony, each traditional brass band and uniformed solute was a reminder of meaning and sacrifice made. The heartbeat of time where values reflected of ‘now’ are the same as those ‘before’. It resonated for Jerry, certainly.

However, it wasn’t those aspects of tradition which spoke particularly to Jerry. It was the care from those in reciting the values and in the community responding to the stars and stripes that made the ceremony a breathing thing. Jerry listened to the speakers, he applauded the awards, but he watched the faces in the audience.

Cora woke early with the jubilant birds and the resentful lawnmowers, even though it was natural to want to sleep in later today. She stayed in bed though, calculating potato salad ingredients and parfait layers and holding her breath to the intermittent rolling ‘r’s of a kid turning over in a blown up air bed during a backyard campout. The day ahead was full, but she didn’t mind being the day’s designated card dealer, shuffling the activity deck and dealing out bubble wands or popsicles, horseshoes and cold beers.

Cora didn’t mind because it wasn’t in the planning that the real activity really happened anyway. Last year they they had planned to use their backyard fire pit to roast marshmallows but it was the impromptu fire dancing to the sound of toy machine guns from some nearby last minute firework that Cora recalled the easiest. It wasn’t any more planned one year to have her son declare he was old enough to stay up late and watch the National Anthem on TV than it was to feel the little impulsive hand inside hers during the performance.

A reflection casts back a blinding likeness, even if memories precariously ripple it. Memories can tend to be ticklish and roll away from the truly sensitive parts or gleefully squeal at the joyful ones. Each year renews and also gets older from memory’s courteous reflections and becomes again a hazy image in a solid frame.

Plan on wonder. Celebrate responses. Wait for nothing.Take a long look.