It’s a quiet night in Avondale. The sun is low in the western sky. The air is lit with lightning bugs. There are a few neighborhood kids, playing in front yards, trying to catch them with Tupperware.
And the memories are getting so thick you have to swat them away like gnats.
I remember the first time I ever heard a lightning bug called a “firefly.” I was 11 years old. A kid from California had recently moved into our neighborhood. He got excited when the front yards were alight with summer lightning bugs.
He said, “Look, fireflies!”
All us kids looked at the new boy as though his cheese had slid off his cracker. Fireflies?
“They’re not fireflies,” said Margaret Ann. “They’re LIGHTNING BUGS.”
Truer words have seldom been spoken.
“No they’re not,” he answered. “They’re FIREFLIES.”
“What the [expletive] is a firefly?” said my cousin, Ed Lee.
“They’re bugs that light up.”
We howled with delight. My cousin Ed Lee almost peed himself. “Californians!” my cousin remarked.
Then the Californian went on to tell us he’d never seen lightning bugs before. He said they didn’t have them in the Golden State. We were aghast. No lightning bugs? That was like not knowing Jesus. Or Dale Earnhardt.
“You’ve never seen lightning bugs?” we said in disbelief.
The Californian shook his head stating that, no, he’d never seen anything like these bugs with the iridescent hindparts.
Which gave us great pride. Because, you see, ever since this Californian had come to our school, he immediately became the hippest kid in our hillbilly class.
Namely, because he had wavy blonde hair, a skateboard, and he knew what tofu was. And one time, for Show and Tell, the kid declared that he had gone surfing. The girls in the class went crazy for him and indicated that they would be interested in bearing his offspring someday.
But he’d never seen lightning bugs. And this made us very proud.
“Wanna catch lightning bugs?” suggested my cousin.
Replied the Californian, “You mean you can CATCH fireflies?”
“No,” answered Cousin Ed Lee. “But you can catch lightning bugs.”
So we raided my mother’s kitchen cabinets. We emerged from the house with Ball mason jars—something else the Californian had never seen before.
“These are funny-looking jars,” he said. “And they have funny lids.”
“These are moonshine jars,” said Margaret.
“What’s moonshine?” said the Californian.
You have to worry about America’s youth.
The next thing we knew, we were all outside, using mason jars the way the Good Lord intended—to catch lightning bugs (fireflies). Which as it happens are neither bugs nor flies. They are beetles.
To catch a lightning bug, you had to have good technique:
You must (1) take the jar in your right hand; then you must (2) hold the lid in your left hand; then (3) you fling the jar through the air haphazardly like one who hath consumed too much moonshine; whereupon you (4) slam the lid over the jar and shout, “I got one!” even if this is a lie.
It was okay to lie about catching lightning bugs because nobody paid any attention to you inasmuch as they were all busy trying to catch their own. We were all chasing the nanoscopic glowing dots.
Once we had jars full of lightning bugs, the Californian asked, “Now what do we do with’em?”
Margaret replied, “You just look at’em.”
“Then you let them go,” added Cousin Ed Lee.
“LET THEM GO?” answered the Californian. “But why go to the trouble of catching so many if you’re just going to set them free?”
“Because,” said Sandra. “They only live 30 days.”
We were mesmerized by the the bright dots in our mason jars, lit up like miracles, meandering to and fro. Their little butts glowing greenish-yellow.
“I’m going to keep my fireflies,” said the Californian.
“You can’t,” said Margaret. “Lightning bugs have to go free so they can make babies.”
“They have to make babies,” said Sandra, “or else we’ll never have lightning bugs again.”
So we kept them for a few minutes. We observed them closely. Then, immediately after our mothers called us inside for supper, we wandered down to the creek and let them all go. We watched the insects fill the night with millions of tiny lights.
“They’re so beautiful,” said the Californian. “I wish beautiful things lived longer lives.”
Truer words have seldom been spoken.
On the night before my oldest daughter was married, my sister & her husband hosted a rehearsal dinner. Their home in Alabama was filled with lots of glass windows to take in the view. There was a flurry of lightning bugs that stunned the guests. The groom and his family were from California, and had never seen lightning bugs. It was a spectacular show, and could be described as a “storm” of lightning bugs, encircled around the property. There must have been thousands of them. None of us had ever seen anything like it before. I have never seen that again, but I will never forget it.
I was awakened gently by a soft whisper from my husband,"Come with me, you have to see this! " Not sensing any anxiety from his voice that would have preceded bad news about children or grandkids, I padded behind him down the hall to the sun room.
With a soft gasp , I tried to make an intelligent interpretation of the sight before me.
Almost like a Disney production, a shimmering, undulating blanket of soft blining lights hovered just above the tall grasses in the empty lot beside our house. Not just in one or two areas but the ENTIRE field was alive with light. And movement! Being an amateur photographer, my first impulse should have been to grab my camera and take a once in a lifetime picture of this ... but I was frozen in awe as was my husband. Our eyes shone with tears of wonder!
Of, course we knew what it was, a huge "meet and greet for lightning bugs" but actually seeing it up close , this size, the moment paralized us both and for the longest time we simply stood and soaked up the wonder in childish amazement of the magical gift!
We never said a word but eventually went back to bed smiling and wrapped in the awareness we had truly witnessed a magical monent meant just for us!