How tall is a hedge? Four feet? How thick? Two feet, maybe, depending on how it’s pruned. Same for width. A row might be hundreds of feet long on an estate, or just a couple shrubs side by side helping define the edge of, say, a backyard in suburban New York. It’s important that you picture such a hedge in your mind. Now you may forget it’s existence in a moment. If you do, I will not judge you harshly, because as you will soon learn, others made just the same mistake. In everyones, there will soon be more exciting things to focus on than this mundane, immobile bush, important though it may have been to seasonal birds and hiders and seekers at other times. But remember that the hedge is there. Or not. It will come back into the story to remind you of its presence, oh yes.

I was born on May 24th 1970. The 4th of July 1976 was the first I can remember. It was a big deal. It was the US bicentennial, and our country pulled out all the stops. Great historic ships paraded in New York harbor, and they rang the cracked Liberty Bell. It was the most memorable of my life. I don’t mean the life of a six year old; that would be silly. I mean that was the most memorable 4th of July in my lifetime. We’d begun that day, and likely prior days, listening to an album of patriot music, in the spirit of the bicentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I knew the marches and tunes by heart, especially “The Stars and Stripes Forever”. (As yet another coincidence, this song was written by John Phillip Sousa, the most famous composer of American patriotic marches, and director of the United States Marine Corps band.) The song is “beloved” by children, not for it’s upbeat tempo, horns and drums, or the lilting piccolos embodying the blowing wind of the flag over the White House. It is loved because someone, somewhere “rewrote” the lyrics from the original “Hurrah for the flag of the free, may it wave as our standard forever” to the far more vivid “Be kind to your web-footed friends, for a duck could be somebody’s mother…”

When you are six years old, there are not many parts of the Fourth of July that could be described as “hands-on”. Tiny arms do not reach high enough to hang decorations, and little feet can not be trusted on a ladder. The traditional food is prepared over open flame, and by American law you must hold a beer in the non-grilling hand. Perhaps mom (assuming traditional patriarchal roles) might trust you to hold a spatula and stir the mayonnaise-y potato salad, but only because the bowl is huge and the mess is easy to clean. So food is hands-off until the eating. If you come from small town America, perhaps you attend a parade. As a six year old, too young to be a scout or other parade marcher, it is just a viewing experience. If you have a good spot in front or on a convenient shoulder, the view is of the local fire-department or high-school band. If not, the view is all crotches. Fireworks are wonderful, but not for little hands. All that flame, and fuse, and countdown and explosion, is not for wee fingers, if you want to keep the finger census high and the ER census low. Only the sparkler is considered kid friendly, because it is long-lasting, ends with a fizzle, and lit by a parental flame. We are all fools to trust sparklers. A devious sparkler once bit me on the finger pad, immediately before I learned that not-sparkly isn’t the same as not-hot.

After the hot-dogs and potato salad, my brother, all of nine, would help set off a firecracker or roman candle. But I was thrilled with being entrusted with the noble sparkler. The first time I held one, I extended my elbow and shoulder keeping the sparks as far from my body as my little arm could stretch. I’m sure my eyes kept darting between the bright crackling particles near my trunk and my parents’ faces, checking how I should feel about having such frightening power in my hands. They must have been encouraging because I loosened up, and became more dynamic. As the daylight waned, I became enamoured of the visual trail that comes with moving the arm joints. I began to skip and prance around the yard. It wasn’t long before I was dual-wielding sparklers, running to and fro in the yard, waving the gloriously sizzling fire above my head and singing at the top of my lungs. All eyes must have been on me, and my eyes were looking up to the sparks as I conducted an imaginary marching band with my glittering batons, and bellowed “be kind to your web-footed friends…”

The reason I feel comfortable saying all eyes must have been on me, is that everyone in the family was so focused upon the jumping, spark-wielding, and singing, that they lost track of the surroundings, and the speed and direction of the running straight at the hedge. 

Let’s edit that preposition, shall we? 

Straight INTO the hedge. 

I’m not sure exactly how many things need to line up perfectly for a six year old boy to run at a hedge of appropriate dimensions with exactly the proper speed and angle so as to penetrate the bush without injury.  Hard enough to wedge himself tight, with his feet unable to get purchase on the ground, and his arms trapped in the branches. Timed perfectly that the boys arms are positioned so the still bright sparklers are extended just beyond the edge of the leaves, so that the bulk of the illumination on the frozen boy is more sparkler than sunset. Whatever the odds, that’s how many things occurred just so, because I remember hovering there, in that bush, looking out at my mom, dad, and brother, as they were bound in place, consumed by laughter at my strange little arboreal interpretation of the Statue of Liberty.