It was the night before Christmas. Jennie misses the opportunity to have her daughter meet Santa Claus.
A fateful encounter with a girl dressed as a Christmas elf will not only save their day but also change their lives as they know it.
This is a...
After a moment or two lost in thought, Jennie realized there had been a suspicious cessation of children's shrieks, and she looked up to see Lisa crouched next to Ella as they stealthily snuck around the group of adults on the next blanket over, huge grins on both their faces.
"Get her, Ella!" Lisa yelled as soon as Jennie spotted them, and she opened fire with the squirt gun she'd borrowed from one of Ella's compatriots. She and Ella giggled madly as they pelted Jennie with water.
They all continued having fun and before they knew it, the sun had finally set.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
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The enormous explosion overhead was quickly followed by another, then dozens, then hundreds more. Ella shrieked in delight as she pressed her fingers in her ears, watching the fireworks while sitting on her Mommy's lap.
The firework show was everything. Patriotic music was coming from the public radio station which was broadcasting the U.S. Marine Corps band from the bandstand on the stage by Lincoln's Memorial, while the thundering explosions overhead shook the ground as they played.
As the firework show approached its climax, the Army added to the raucous noise, firing off cannons in time to the 1812 overture. When the show ended, people cheered furiously. In the silence left behind, the crowd of a half-million sounded almost puny by comparison.
Lisa packed up their picnic basket while Jennie folded their blanket, and the trio started making their way through the press of the crowd to the metro station. Parking in DC was out of the question on the Fourth of July, and they'd accepted that they'd have to put up with the crowds to wait for a subway train to take them back to Virginia.
As they slowly moved forward with the crowd through the turnstiles and down to the platform, Ella reached the end of her endurance and started whining for Jennie to pick her up.
"Baby, I can't carry you right now. I need you to walk, okay?" Jennie said. Being out in the sun all afternoon had taken more out of her than she'd thought, and she barely had the energy to shuffle forward in the line.
"Here Jen, take the basket. I can get her," Lisa said, and scooped up Ella, who promptly wrapped her arms and legs around her.
"Thanks Lisa," Jennie said as the next train pulled into the station.
After they boarded the car, a pair of men offered their seats to them, which they gratefully accepted with nods of thanks. Ella had her head on Lisa's shoulder, arms still wrapped around her neck.
"She's sound asleep," Jennie whispered to Lisa over the clatter of the subway wheels as they sped under the Potomac River.
"We'll be home soon and get her in bed, easy-peasy," Lisa said.
