Sparklers, Smoke Bombs, and the Sweet Art of Sitting on My Tuckus

    July 4th, 2024. The air inside the giant yellow-and-blue tent in Nixa, Missouri was thick enough to chew, smelling of dry dirt, cardboard boxes, and that faint, sulfurous hint of gunpowder waiting to be lit. My husband Travis and I sat under the whirring of three industrial fans, watching the dust motes dance in the heavy mid-afternoon heat. A year ago, I would have felt guilty for just sitting here. Today, I am learning to accept that my body has a different blueprint now.

    We made a conscious decision yesterday. No fireworks. No fighting the crowds, no sitting on damp lawn chairs waiting for a twenty-minute show that usually ends up looking like a smoky smudge in the night sky. Last year, some sweet friends took us to my old hometown display, and honestly, it just wasn't very impressive. Maybe we are getting older. Maybe we are just lazy. Or maybe, when you have stared down a Stage 2b Serous Carcinoma diagnosis and felt your cells literally get wiped clean by chemicals, you start to look at how you spend your remaining energy with a lot more scrutiny.

    Socializing is not free. It is just as exhausting as physical labor. I used to think I could push through any social gathering, but these days, my battery drains in minutes if I am not careful. You have to choose your crowds. You have to choose where you show up.

    But yesterday, we showed up. Not for the spectacle, but for people who matter.

    Our friends have run a fireworks stand for the last couple of years, and their theme is "Minions"—complete with giant cartoon eyes staring out at the gravel parking lot. During my darkest chemo cycles, when my hair was nothing but a patch of soft peach fuzz and my mind was lost in the thick, gray fog of chemo brain, these friends did not disappear. They showed up with meals, with quiet support, with love. When you survive something like that, you carry a quiet debt of gratitude. You want to give back, even when your body only has a fraction of its old strength.

    Travis gave back by lifting heavy crates and sweating through his shirt in the Missouri sun. Me? Well, I sat on my tuckus.

    I became the self-appointed queen of the folding chair. Every twenty minutes or so, I would force myself to stand up, shake out the stiffness in my legs, and take a slow lap around the plywood tables. My job, in my own mind at least, was to check on the small stuff. The smoke bombs. The little black snakes that leave those curly ash trails on the concrete. The sparklers that we all loved when we were kids. I would pat a stack of boxes, pretend to organize a row of novelty tanks, and then head right back to my chair, completely out of breath from a thirty-foot walk.

    The shortness of breath is a frustrating reminder of where I am. It is the lingering signature of the infusion room, a whisper from the past that says, *not yet, you are still healing.* The unfiltered truth is that your body has its own timeline, its own stubborn healing pace, and it does not care about your holiday plans.

    Whenever customers came up to me with complicated questions about fifty-shot aerial cakes or mortar shells, I smiled warmly and immediately pawned them off on the professionals. I do not know anything about the big stuff. But if a grandkid wanted to know about the sparklers, I was their girl. I gave my honest opinion on the classics, the ones that smell like childhood and summer nights, before the world got so incredibly complicated.

    I kept my giant insulated cup close by all day. It was filled to the brim with ReLyte, my favorite electrolyte mix. That stuff saved my life during active chemotherapy when my body could not hold onto hydration to save itself, and it remains an absolute necessity for me today. My survival skin is still sensitive, my internal thermostat is permanently glitched, and without those clean electrolytes, I would have wilted into a puddle under that tent within an hour. The heat outside the shade was brutal, a heavy blanket of Midwestern humidity that makes your clothes stick to your back the second you step past the canvas boundary.

    The absolute highlight of the afternoon was this adorable young family. They had two little kids, their eyes wide with excitement at all the colorful boxes. The mom looked at me, a little shy, and asked if I would mind taking a picture of them in front of the tent. I said, "Absolutely." I took a couple of shots, and then I noticed the giant Minion decorations flanking the entrance. I told them they had to stand right there for another family photo. They loved the idea, crowding together, smiling real, sun-baked smiles. It was a tiny moment, but it felt so clean and good.

    Then, the afternoon rush hit.

    By four o'clock, the tent became a total madhouse. It was the absolute busiest day of the year, and people were pouring in, desperate for last-minute noise and light. I sat there in sheer shock watching the cash register. People were spending hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars on cardboard boxes stuffed with combustibles that literally vanish into smoke in a matter of seconds. We had one gentleman who was putting on a massive show for his employees, and his total came out to over five thousand dollars. Five thousand.

    I sat back in my chair, watching him wheel those heavy crates out, and I could not help but think about what I could do with that kind of money right now. The medical bills, the ongoing prescriptions, the cost of just trying to rebuild a life after cancer—it adds up to a mountain that never quite seems to flatten. There is no scanxiety today, but the financial echo of treatment is always there in the background. But I shook the thought away. I digressed. I am truly happy for those kids and families who got to watch those lights color the sky last night. The world is heavy right now, and if five thousand dollars of fire in the sky brings some genuine joy to a crowd of hard-working people, then so be it.

    By five in the afternoon, my body was sending some very clear signals that my shift was over. Travis and I packed up our things. We had to beat the sunset, not just because we were exhausted, but because we had to get home to our puppy before the neighborhood went into full combat mode.

    Our poor dog absolutely hates the noise. The fourth of July is an annual nightmare for her, and we needed to be there to comfort her before she went into what feels like a near-cardiac arrest from the constant, rattling booms. She trembles, she hides behind the toilet, and she looks at us like the sky is falling. In a way, for her, it is.

    The drive home is two hours of winding highway. Two hours of sitting completely still in a car seat, which is a special kind of torture for a body that has been through the ringer. By the time we hit the halfway mark, the bone pain was screaming. The neuropathy in my feet—that old, familiar, buzzing numbness that sometimes feels like walking on frozen gravel—started to flare up with a vengeance. My legs throbbed, aching deep inside where the marrow used to fight so hard.

    But we made it home.

    We got our puppy settled, we turned on some white noise, and we let the evening pass in our own quiet way. All in all, it was a good day. It was a hard day, physically, but a deeply good one. We laughed. We connected with some incredibly interesting people. And most of all, we got to stand—or sit—shoulder-to-shoulder with the friends who held our hands when our world was falling apart.

    Healing is not a straight line. Sometimes it looks like a slow lap around a table of sparklers, and sometimes it looks like knowing when to go home and protect your peace. To anyone else out there pacing themselves today—you are doing just fine. Grab your electrolytes, find your favorite chair, and let the rest of the world chase the noise.

Read the Next Post