Saturday, July 02, 2011

Sitting quietly between then and now

Every night for the past week or more, I've sat on the back deck and watched the fireflies. There aren't many because we don't have much of the tall grass that they seem to like. Just a few, though, are enough to make me think of myself as a 10-year-old boy.
There was always more of everything when we were kids, wasn't there. The summers were hotter, the winters colder. Lots and lots of fireflies on warm nights in early summer. Once in a while, I'd tried to catch some and was a few times successful. You learn quickly that they don't light up in the jar on your bedside table. They didn't light up because they had no hope for love as long as they were in the jar.
I was old as a kid, far too serious even in my immaturity, taking myself much too seriously for far back as as I can remember. It's good, and even a bit of a revelation, to be drawn to those times more than a half-century ago, to realize that I was really a kid who caught fireflies on a summer night.
Posted by Karl Hakkarainen at 9:58 PM

2 comments:

Linda said...

I was an avid firefly hunter between the ages of 6 and 8. In my neighborhood there was nothing else to do in the evening so all the kids on the block would gather in someone's backyard for the hunt. And from my recollection, we never caught any that ended up in a jar, we just kept them imprisoned in our hands for a few minutes(that tickle and flutter was great) and eventually let them go. We kids whirled around the bushes at full speed, screeching and scaring the little buggers in a way that frightens me now as an adult. Kind of crazy, but after a short time, we all became so exhausted from the activity, our parents scooped us up, got us ready for bed and we slept like little angels. Thanks for the memory Karl.

7:47 PM
Karl Hakkarainen said...

I would also be surprised if many parents would let their kids wander around after dark unencumbered by adults.

8:09 PM

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