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Fireflies by Catherine Wiant February 14, 2007 She had mixed feelings about fireflies. They were at their best when the air was hot and humid. Then the evening was a-twitter with them, blinking off and on by the hundreds against the night sky--silent--leaving the sound effects to the crickets, for they,too, appreciate the humidity. Which is what she disliked about July most, that and the way the sun shone directly down with relentless intensity fading the color from the garden flowers and any other part of the natural world. The air absorbed fumes from passing cars and any pollutant at all hat created that dreay dense of hopelessness she had seen in futuristic films. She was forgiving of July because of the fireflies. In the evening they watched from the front stoop, and that was a pretty good show, but sometimes they would sit on the deck at the edge of the garden--when guests were with them or maybe to watch the moon rise, full and bright, then draw their gaze up to the high up itn silver maple trees drooped over the garden and deck where the branches glowed with hundreds and hundreds of twinkly fireflies that seemed to her more like a glimpse into the realm of faerie--had they risen through the hollow of the tree to dance in the midsummer night? They would watch for a long time and not say a word. Her mother had called them "lightning bugs" and she remembered the first time she had heard her say so. In the summer she and her mother and three sisters would board the California Zephyr to Minnesota where her mother had grown up. It was a sleek, silver train that seemed to be moving at a smooth, silent speed even when it was standing still. The top was bubbled with vista domes where they would sit during the day and sometimes at night with their pillows covered in fresly starched cases brought to them by the porter for twenty-five cents. They'd fall asleep, stretched out, watching the huge stars as they drifted into sleep. The train sped through the Feather River Canyon and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Early inthe morning they would cross the Utah Salt Flats that she had once mistaken for the Great Salt Lake and thought they were riding right over it. Somewhere along he way they stopped in Iowa, although the particulars were vague in her mind, it having been so long ago. It was evening when they pulled into a small station, one of those with only a building and a platform, and she and her sisters stood in the space between the cars watching their mother step off to buy something from a vendor. They watched, lined in a row, and she remembers then seeing the twinkling for the first time. Like magic, the off and on glow between them and their mother held the little girls in wonder, forgetting the train, foretting their worry that their mother might not get back on in time, just watching. "What is that, Mama?" she asked wheh her mother climbed back up. She was hoping her mother would say "faeries" because by then she believed in them. Her mother turned to see, then turned back. "Lightning bugs" she said, smiling. "Lightning bugs," she whispered, a sound hearly as good as faeries. When they were small, she watched fireflies with her children on the front stoop of their house. Sometimes they raced around on the grass trying to catch them, but never did. "Just watch them," she wanted to say. "It's better if you just watch them." But they were different than she had been. One summer her sister sent them an insect cage--a plastic jar with a screw-on mesh top so the insects could breathe. Her son used it to stalk the glow, and one night he caught one. Tightening the lid, he returned to the stoop to take a look--a black bug with red-tipped winds and the faintest glow pulsing from its behind. She could tell he was disappointed, turning the jar over and over, examining it sadly and intently. "The magic goes away when you capture them," she whispered into his ear. He stood up purposefully then and walked to the center of the grass where he screwed off the lid and then lifted the jar high over his head so the insect could fly out. He stood there for a long time, his serious expression showing he was doing something important. About the author: While this is written in the third person, it is autobiographical. I was born in Minnesota, Duluth, where I grew up to appreciate wild raspberries, sweet corn, and the droning call of the oar boats as they approached Duluth harbor at the edge of Lake Superior. We could see all that from our grandmother's garden high on a hill. But I grew up in California, with a sense that Minnesota was eternal summer. I have wandered to places around the world--Greece, Thailand, Burma, Scotland, Orkney and Denmark among my favorites--where I have listened to and bought collections of folk and faerie lore. I have learned that even in these sophisticated times, people still believe in these stories, or at least, somone who does. As long as there are folks who can believe in something they don't see, then the world is safe. For many long years I have been a junior high and high school English teacher, where I especially enjoy teaching creative writing along with such great epics as Gilgamesh and The Odyssey. I scribble stories and journals quite a bit in a little one-room arts and crafts cottage we built at the edge of our deck, but this is the first time I have shared anything outside a small circle of friends. My husband suggested I do this, and so I am. | | | |
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