HAMPDEN – The crowd was just beginning to assemble as I walked across the school grounds to McGraw School. It was the evening of Aug. 19, the 27th annual Children’s Day celebration.

Families pushing babies in strollers, and carrying blankets and lawn chairs, headed for the football field behind the school.

A flurry of preteen girls dressed in shorts, long hair in bouncy motion, ran around together, chattering to one another like birds grouping to head south.

Grandparents with gray hair carried toddler-age blonde-haired grandchildren. Dads toted pizza back to kids sitting on blankets and moms lounged in lawn chairs as they watched little ones gambol on the grass. Teen boys and girls wearing T-shirts and beads on leather strings around their necks talked on cell phones, blue screens glowing in the waning light.

Everyone was intent on settling in on the grassy slope above the football field before the fireworks display spilled its orange, purple, blue, red and gold light across the dark night sky.

I rendezvoused with my son Jason and his wife, Jenn, of Carmel, her 5-year-old niece Reese of Stetson, my son Andrew of Orono and my 9-year-old grandson Cody of Bridgton. It was the perfect excuse for our last family get-together of the summer – before soccer practice began, before school commenced, before the leaves turned red and fell, heralding another cold, white season.

It wasn’t my first Children’s Day fireworks – I am a 30-year resident of Hampden. But it was the first time Cody and I had been together at the event. It was one of those “full circle” moments of my life.

As the sun sank in a smear of mauve and pale gray, I gazed out across the growing crowd. Light sticks – fluorescent circles of rainbow colors – glowed from the wrists, ankles, waists and heads of children and adults.

In the distance to the north, a heavy bank of dark gray clouds emitted low rumbles of thunder. Lightning flashed at intervals, creating a dramatic backdrop when the first of the fireworks burst into the sky.

My sons and I knew what to expect – Children’s Day fireworks are like none other because they are up-close – but not so close that spectator safety is endangered. It’s almost like being right up there in the sky with the gorgeous colors and light patterns.

“These are good fireworks,” Reese said after the first few salvos. Sitting happily in my lap, she carried on a running commentary, as each missile exploded, about the beauty of its colors and her amazement at the patterns. “That was my favorite,” she exclaimed more than once.

Cody, like most 9-year-old boys, simply watched with a reserved kind of intensity, reminding me of his father at a similar age. Expressing his pleasure, he commented every so often, “Cool.”

Several times, the crowd broke out in spontaneous applause after an especially spectacular combination of color and pattern glowed and faded against the night. For that half-hour, the crowd, and my family, were bound, not only by bonds of love for family, but by ribbons of delight that the occasion tied around us.