I’m skipping the fireworks traffic tonight, exerting my freedoms by writing through the excitement. After all, I’ve had enough colorful chaos in my recent dating ventures. 

Independence Day had it all: work, gym, a first date, beach with friends, dinner with my brother, and this date with my readers; now, were there any fireworks?

The sun has yet to set on Hampton Roads.  Families gather in yards around the neighborhood with firecrackers that make my dog, Tito, bark at the wind.  The familiar cacophony of cicadas and bird calls intermixes, absent the typical motors of lawn equipment. 

The fireworks will come at dark.  They always do.  The last time the fourth fell on a writing night, Charming and I got caught in traffic and missed the big show six years ago.  I’d just returned from Italy, and I recall the fireworks being less of a draw still punch drunk on the Sistine Chapel and Capri’s cobbled beaches. 

The fireworks I remember best were witnessed with people I loved.  They were made somehow more remarkable through the endless stream of questions piped in by my twin nieces last summer at Yorktown Beach.  In the two years before that, I watched them with my oldest brother’s family from the veranda in Greenville. 

They aren’t only for the 4^th of July, though.  There have been baseball games and carnivals, forty years brimming with ten-minute spans of time when thousands of eyes around mine were fixed on the skies, waiting for wonder.  And those explosions, sight and sound, best conjure those of battle, our war-battered country juxtaposed forever with freedom when we celebrate.

Back in Nashville, my ex-husband’s family used to shoot them off in the back yard over the lake in their subdivision. I remember feeling like there were never enough; ever a skeptical judge of finales, I always hope the next fireworks display would top the last, satisfy my need, like the final sentence in the final chapter of the book you didn’t want to end.

I always had a boyfriend before I married, and for a season after that.  I experienced chemistry to varying degrees. Then one Independence Day, my attention turned to a man who would make everyone who came before him seem like back yard fireworks with dissatisfying finales. 

And as I typed the previous paragraph, the pops began sounding all around Hampton Roads.  I can see glimmers above the tree line from my perch in the Crawford’s back yard.  My date today asked me why I was still single.  I coughed up some answers, but right now, amidst the colorful chaos of the fireworks shows and my memory of that man, it seems obvious.

I want to feel fireworks again, and ever the skeptical judge of finales, I want the next fireworks display to top the last, satisfy my need like that final sentence in a book I don’t ever want to end. 

I let somebody make me believe that I wasn’t a princess.  It redefined my late thirties.  At forty, as the sights and sounds of war surround, my faith in dating is being restored as I gain self-confidence, establish self-worth, and assert myself.  I am an independent woman with an incredible range of skills, and while I’m not a princess, I’m still a catch.  I forgot that somewhere, maybe back in Capri.

Knowing that man’s eyes are turned on the same skies as me but that we’ll never experience them together fills me with longing.  The blasts echo in the canopy over the yards.  Sparklers go off next door.  I remember what it was like to have chemistry on every level, like we were soul mates, only he faded into memories.

It was over before it began, but for this ten-minute span of life, sparks flew.  Our eyes were watching the skies, caught up in the wonder.

Yes, it’s true that I’m still single because I’ve got a strong gage of what I do and don’t want in a partner, that I’m selective about the quality of a guy I’ll date, and that I don’t take physical intimacy lightly. 

But at the end of a remarkable holiday, between the bursts, it’s this: now that I know what that kind of chemistry is like, that firing on all pistons connection kind of chemistry, nothing less will do.

Will I ever feel that kind of chemistry again, or are those fireworks just once in a lifetime?  I’d have to be a princess to expect more. 

Do we even need the fireworks? They come every year, but not every day.  Am I holding out for some combustible reaction that won’t come again?

My date today was a gentleman, an excellent listener, and a refreshing departure from recent trends.  We met at my happy place this side of the Atlantic, Fort Monroe Beach.  I laughed a lot and found him interesting.  For the first time I can remember, I’m looking forward to getting to know him better. 

That must have been the finale nearby.  There was a chilling quiet before cheers replaced the blasts.  Rumbles will continue for hours to torture little pups like Tito. 

In the growing quiet, it occurs to me that those epic fireworks didn’t happen on a first date either.  I’d known him for years, and we’d been on a few dates before I knew we had a connection I hadn’t made before.

I am encouraged tonight, rocking my annual stars and stripes tank, reflecting on a day filled with friends and family in my favorite place.  I remember I’m an American, born to freedom, raised to overcome, educated for success, and proud of my heritage.  My faith and gifts are privileges.

I don’t know if a future match is enough without them, but I am.  I am enough without the fireworks.  And I’m still holding out for the great next show, forty years and counting.