One Year Ago Today: Fireworks on the French Riviera

We don’t celebrate the Fourth of July in Europe. My children assumed the French were stupid about fireworks and throughout the years I hid a lot of them in my suitcases when we flew from New York to our house in Cap Ferrat for summer vacations. I sold that house and exchanged it for a yacht to live on during the summer months so now I am floating on the Fourth of July. You have no idea of the bliss of living on a boat if you have never lived on one. The cobalt, twilight-blue sea at eight o’clock in the evening and the lights sprinkled over the shore and the only sound a tiny splash below to remind you that you are on water. The world is more beautiful from a boat and my smallest grandchild always reminds me that I am a very lucky grandma. But she, too, wanted fireworks. I was ready and, on the Fourth of July, I watched my grandchildren’s eyes rock and roll as we set off our amazing American fireworks in the bay of Beaulieu in France.