July 17, 2020

The other evening I was sitting on my couch, feet on the ottoman, reading a book. It was just too darned hot to enjoy sitting outside as I usually do on a  summer evening, but from my living room window, I had a view of my quiet hilltop edged with trees and centered by tall grasses around my swimming pool.

At one point I looked up from my book to see flashes of fireflies on the hillside, not just the one or two I had seen previously this summer, but a ballet of fireflies moving on my hilltop. 

I watched them, remembering how my two children used to run across this hillside in hot Virginia summer evenings, with an open mason jar in one hand and the lid with holes punched in it in the other hand, to catch and trap fireflies. Bill and I would stand and watch, swatting away the occasional mosquito, the night warm around us. When enough fireflies were caught, the two children would sit on the ground, watching their firefly lanterns glow for a little while, until it was time to release the little insects back to the night.

And thinking of my son and daughter, I remember how I as a child caught fireflies on the hillside in Fayetteville, Arkansas where my grandparents lived. The summers were even hotter then, it seemed, with no air conditioning to cool us off, only big palm fans to wave while rocking in the cane-seated rocking chairs on the big open porch of their home. And when it was dark enough, my brothers and my sister and I would take the  mason jars from our grandmother, and dance across the hillside, catching fireflies to make our lanterns glow.  

And stepping further back in time, I remember as a little girl of maybe three years old, sleeping in the stone cottage, my grandparents’ first home on the hilltop, before my younger brother and sister were born. I was staying over on the mountain, sharing a room with my grandmother. She already was gently snoring. The windows were open to the summer breeze, and on the ceiling a firefly was dancing, lost for a time before it found its way back outside. And watching the firefly and listening to the soft sounds of my grandmother breathing, I fell asleep.