Author: docthink

no one of consequence

Sharp Dressed Man

Impala painted in flames. Sticks out.

The man standing on the corner stood out. It wasn’t because he was tall. He was likely 6’2″, or was that height when he was younger. But he wasn’t stand out tall.

It wasn’t his suit. It was a black suit. The fit of his pants was a little off, but that was likely because he was on the thin side. His jacket was fine, and he wore a crisp white shirt. He could have been a musician, but if he was, he played a harmonica and it was in his pocket. He carried nothing that would carry an instrument.

He did have a pile of papers in his hand. No folders. He might be carrying some mail. He likely walked past the train stop because he had today’s Politico at the top of his pile. There’s a newsstand next to the station on the block. His pile though? Not really a notable pile.

He looked over the traffic as he waited for the light to change. His silver white and gray hair was blown about by the breeze. It wasn’t wild. It was anchored a bit by its weight. Although it was fairly fine–not thin–it hung halfway down his back. His beard was much whiter than his hair. It was a clear contrast since his beard was the same length as his hair. It hung to the middle of his torso. His beard fluttered in the wind.

His was a ZZ Top or an elder Duck Dynasty beard. That was unusual. He wasn’t wearing sunglasses, even though it was very sunny. You’d expect sunglasses. His glasses were small, oval wireframes. They were silver or chrome frames.

The light changed and he crossed the street. The late summer solstice sun reflected off his face. Maybe he was an old hippie. Maybe he was a preacher. Maybe he was an orchestra conductor. Maybe he was an old hippie preacher conductor. Or just a guy. Just a guy crossing the street.

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Suck Less

Scrolling through Twitter today I was catching up on Brexit, Benghazi, SCOTUS, Pat Summit and the regular random cat pictures, movie memes and (unfathomable to me) GoT references. Full stop when I saw this video.

I have not been able to stop thinking about it all day.

tl;dr a six year old child actor plays two roles. One, a street urchin. The other a middle or upper middle class child. People react very differently to her, ignoring her when she has a dirty face and stopping to help her when she is clean.

I watch this and wonder not just about how much people suck, but–since I’m a people, too–how much do I suck? Do I see and connect? Or am I blind and indifferent?  What does my pigeon brain see that stops me from being kind?

I’m thinking about the suburban neighbors calling the police to report unaccompanied kids, six and ten, walking down a street to the park–free range. The strangers thought those children should be protected. Then I think about police shooting a twelve year old boy who was playing, just seconds after they rolled up. They couldn’t even be bothered with administering first aid to a little boy, a sixth grader, named Tamir Rice. He had been playing with an airsoft gun. [Baby Bear had an airsoft gun in middle school.]

I’m thinking about the mother with the sleeping babe in the stroller asking downtown office workers for diaper money. People don’t even look at her. We brush past. We wonder why she’s begging. We think that she may buy drugs and not Pampers. We judge her.

Then I remember telling my parents that everyone in D.C., would be happy to help them with the subway. Just ask. I know that those same office workers who can’t see the woman with the stroller would offer my midwestern retiree folks money for subway fare. People would judge them as nice old people.

They had to stop filming the video because the little girl was so hurt. People were mean to her. Truly mean. Just because she had dirty clothes and a sooty face. But when she was clean, they were loving and kind.

She knew she was the same person. She couldn’t endure the contrast, the unfairness, the disparity, the despair. She cried. I cried, too. Not just for the mean, but because her budding soul felt the mean.

I have been thinking about this video all day. I know I am not the good guy in the video. There’s work I need to do to transcend my own bias, my antipathy and my apathy. Baby Bear says we should do things from love. Maybe I wouldn’t have stopped and helped that child. Tomorrow, and the next day and the next and the next and the next next, though, I can.

Nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. –Anne Frank

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Window Dressing

An image of the Andrew Wyeth painting, The Wind from the Sea.

It was likely still gray. Like the light when the night turns over to day, but before the sun does its shine thing. I was reluctantly awake.

That’s not really true. Reluctance is active. I was completely inactive. My state of waking was a passive occurrence. I wasn’t doing awake. I wasn’t encouraging awake. I just was. Mostly.

My eyes weren’t closed. Close is an action verb, too. I wasn’t acting. There were eyelids laying across my eyes. If I was thinking, I would have wondered about slipping back into that other state. Sleep. I could go either way, and, indeed, I was passing between these consciousnesses. I was given to repose.

The motor on the little fan whirred and then receded somewhere far away as I slipped back into sleep. The forced air rushed past my bare shoulder. I moved my hand from underneath my pillow and pulled the sheet up. It wasn’t a waking move as much as a reflex. My hand found its way back under the pillow and my mind back to a dreamscape.

My body warmed fast. Too fast, passing quickly through snug and stopping on roast. My left leg kicked off my blanket and sheet. I dangled my foot over the side of the bed. I raised my shoulder to let the sheet fall away and tucked my foot back under my covers. I cozied into the linens, wrapped with an ambient satisfaction from the thin sheet protecting me from the chilly air.

Temperature fully regulated, my mind left the room and joined a meadow or a garden or a house that I’ve never seen but I know is mine. Interrupted by a pressure drop. It’s my wakeup call. I’m roused enough to hit snooze before I lapse back to that other state. That latent state , where there is only one verb. Is.

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Flyboy

DCA Terminal A. So lonely.

I hate dropping him off at the airport. Letting someone else drop him off is even worse.

I sit next to the wall on a mid-century fake leather held aloft by real chrome chair. I sit there because I want him to know that I’m waiting for him. That I’m aching for him. That him coming home is critical to my well-being. Because without him, I am less well.

I sit there so that he sees me and he knows that he is home because I am home. I carry home with me. I want him to know that he’s welcome and that this is–that I am–always his home.

While I’m waiting, before I see him, it’s like Christmas morning. So much anticipation. I don’t know what he’ll be wearing. Dressed for the mountains or the valley? Will his hair be at his shoulders or high and tight? Will he be wearing flip flops or boots? Hat? Beard? Shorts? Coat?

He never breaks his swag, except for maybe a twitch of a smile at the far corner of his mouth so from my angle I see the echo of his smile. He might turn his head and nod as I stand up and trot toward him.

I wait. I watch him walk under the arch of the spaceship white corridor in Terminal A. And when he sees me out of the corner of his eye, he doesn’t acknowledge me–except he veers a little, toward me. I stand up from my chair. I’m wearing a wig. It’s an Angela Davis style afro. I feel like a badass. Because I’m wearing a power prop, and because I’m going to make him laugh. He almost doesn’t acknowledge the wig, but can’t help it. He loves it. He’s home. He takes my hug, even in public. Even when I look like a freak.

When I take him back to the airport, it is not so much fun. I still want him to feel home, but this is the home he leaves behind. He’s going to his new home.

He has two homes. The home that I made and the home that he’s making. It’s all good. Really, it’s very good. But I can’t help feeling loss. But I can’t help feeling proud. And I drop him off because I want to have every second with him that there is. Every one.

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Beautiful Swimmer

Maryland blue crabs. So much work for so little meat for so much reward.

I didn’t grow up eating Maryland crabs. This was very obvious to people who did.

Early in my career, I worked for an association. One of our members, Mary, invited me to speak at a chapter event. Since it was at the beach I said, “Yes!”

Ocean City, Md., has a boardwalk with a big ferris wheel that reveals then hides the shore as it circles. It has cotton candy and beach fries and whack-a-mole and t-shirts that say, “Don’t Bother Me, I’m Crabby.” But you don’t get crabs on the boardwalk.

Mary and her husband Chester were from Baltimore. They had a daughter my age, a son a few years older and two grandchildren, so far. They loved the beach and the Eastern Shore where the watermen delivered rockfish and oysters and crabs. There’s also amazing Eastern Shore chicken you can get at a fire house on the way to the ocean. But this isn’t about chicken.

My hosts spent many summers picking crabs (picking is how you eat crabs). They made no assumptions about me, though, and politely asked if I ate crabs. I thought I did, and it seemed like fun. They took me to a favorite spot. It was back over the bridge, heading away from the ocean across some marshy land. It was a crab house.

I knew how to order a beer, and Charlie asked how many crabs I could eat. I didn’t know. And, I really didn’t know. When the waitress brought the platter piled high with steaming crabs unevenly seasoned with red powder, I realized just how over my head I was. This wasn’t lobster. No. It was not lobster at all.

Charlie grabbed two of the crustaceans and dropped them next to his beer. He started pulling one apart and banging a piece with a hammer. I swigged my beer and, following Mary’s lead, I took a crab off the plate and placed it in front of me, on my newspaper tablecloth. I snuck a look at Mary and mimicked her by pulling off an appendage. I used a nutcracker to open it. The use of the tool on the oddly shaped claw did not come natural to me. I did, however, get some meat. And a little shell. The meat was quite good. The shell, not so much, but it did have the flavor of salt, celery, mustard, cayenne, and whatever seventy-three other spices are in the yellow can of Old Bay. Fortified, I repeated on the other side of my crab. Then, I was stuck.

I turned the body of the crab around. It was looking at me. I spun it away, but I couldn’t find a way in. Chester was on his fourth. Mary kindly asked if I had picked crabs before. She didn’t want to embarrass me, but I was obviously incompetent. Or, in her mind, untrained. I looked up, wide-eyed, and she schooched closer to me. Chester knocked back another crab. I could tell because the empty carcasses were piling up on his side of the table. He paused to eat his ear of corn. I think he powdered it with Old Bay before he ate it.

Mary showed me where I had missed some meat on the hinge part of the claw. She pointed at the legs and demonstrated where to pull them off and how to suck out the strings of meat. These were very big crabs, so it was worth the effort. She expertly flipped the crab on his back and lifted the tab on its belly as if she were unlocking a round red box. This exposed an opening at the top for her thumb to wrest it’s body apart.

I clumsily followed her demonstration and attempted on my own crab. I couldn’t get a good feel to separate the “lid” from the body. She helped me. I was now faced with the insides of an arachnid. That I was supposed to eat. But first I had to brush away the grayish gills. Not to be eaten. At this point I was starting to wonder what I could eat. It’s been all prep except for those claws I ate twenty minutes ago. Meanwhile, Chester ordered a second beer and was on his eighth crab. He was licking the salty seasoning off his very messy fingers. I think he smirked at me. Maybe it was a look of pity.

Now, I was supposed to take the body and crack it in half. The body was like a big honeycomb, only thin and fragile. Mary was eating from hers. Mine collapsed in my hands and I learned why it was called picking as I picked hunks and scraps of crab meat out of the debris of cartilage. There was one piece, though, that slid out intact from it’s chamber. It was moist and sweet and significant enough that it was more than one bite and more than two chews for each bite. And I knew, in that moment, that was why we were doing this.

Chester ordered another plate of crabs.

I struggled through another crab, but by the time I got to my third, all the lessons escaped from my head. I couldn’t find the tab. I ate my corn. I successfully extricated meat from the claws. I was dirtied by splashes of crab juice from my forehead through my elbows and, of course my hands. The backs as well as the front. There was blood coming from my thumb where I cut it on the shell as I was trying to find something to eat. I ate my coleslaw. It was good. It was cool. My beer was warm.

I pushed my crab around on my newspaper a bit. Mary started feeding me meat that she had picked, but after a few bites I decided that she should feed herself. I said that I was full. Chester lifted his eyebrows at Mary as he sucked the meat out of his twelfth crab.

Once I had declared my “fullness,” I could better enjoy my dinner companions. They teased each other with the bite of a long marriage but without bitterness. They finished each other’s sentences and interrupted when the one told the story wrong. I had an iced tea to round out my dinner. Chester ate the last of the crabs. He drove us back over the bay and back to our conference hotel. I did have a fun time and thanked them for the adventure.

The hotel was a step or two above a touristy, “family” oceanside motel from the 70s. The towels were very thin, but were more than sufficient to wash off the crab juice. When I had cleaned up and changed my shirt, I thought the coast was clear. I surreptitiously crossed the small lobby–it was more like a vestibule–and walked to my car. Up the strip was a drive through. I got the Number 1 hamburger meal. With a shake. I knew how to eat that.

After that lesson, when we’d eat crabs I’d sit next to somebody who liked picking crabs and let them feed me. Sometimes it was The Spouse. Many times it was someone else’s spouse. I wasn’t proud. Occasionally someone would give me a refresher lesson. I liked crab, just not enough to pick them. In other good news, crabs were usually part of a summer party with an accompanying barbecue. I could always have a hotdog after mooching crab.

One year, the Spouse was away for the neighborhood crab feast. He had the role of walking the boys through their crab consumption. This time, it was on me. But, I knew exactly what to do. I taught them where the meat was in the claws, to open and eat from the hinge side, to suck the juices from the legs, to pull the tab and separate the top, to remove the gills and crack the body. They were much better students than me, but over years of observation I had became a crab picker. So much that people started to think I grew up eating Maryland crabs.

Callinectes sapidus, the Maryland blue crab. It’s part of my language. Hey hon, Chester wouldn’t get all the crabs now.

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Dahlia Dalliance

A deep red dahlia.

Someone brought me flowers.

Why this night? Did I become Ms. Universe? Well, maybe that didn’t happen. There must be a selection board. Or a panel of judges that make that decision. Nope, I didn’t win a pageant.

Did I nail my recital? Taking a graceful final bow, my right knee bent, my toe pointing stage right, my left leg trailing behind; bent at the waist with my arms floating above the air and my head lowered modestly? Nope. I wasn’t even performing.

Maybe I needed some appeasement? I didn’t even know that I was angry. In fact, I was experiencing no offense so there was no need for a spray of apologies. Nothing to forgive.

Perhaps it was a hallmark holiday? Looking at the calendar, the closest festival seems to be Flag Day. And that was a few weeks ago. Even on the personal calendar, there are no birthdays (not mine) or anniversaries (not mine). Nope. Not a marker of a day.

Am I sick, or even more serious, am I dead? Thankfully, no to both of those options. I feel great.

But still, there is a bouquet. It is in my hands, and it is so beautiful that it could have been flowers for someone else. But they were for me. And I am well.

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Pitchers of Water

Post storm water droplets reflected on the leaves of the tree. This is awesome. Who knew you could capture this on a phone? Really, who knew?

The sky opened up with a fury unleashed from the heavy ball and chain of oven heat and thick humidity. It was like a bunch of frat boys balancing an unlimited supply of beer tubs full of cold water and dumping them, one after another, over the deck and the wet splashing down on unsuspecting bystanders. It was that. With an EDM light show and the deafening boom of Thor’s hammer. And, tragically, without the eye candy of the God of Thunder.

A bunch of people were plastered against the wall of the building underneath a narrow overhang. They must be waiting for the bus. The bus must be delayed. Of course it was, since the “safety surge” is serially shutting down stretches of the subway all summer. The people were mostly wet, some very very wet. But they jostled for dry space as they waited for their mad dash to the H Bus. They held umbrellas and plastic CVS bags against the wet. Almost all of them had at least a small dry patch. They worked to maximize that patch.

There was a man who exuded misery, or he would if anything could come out of him. He was slick with water, his white shirt glued to his back. It wasn’t that he didn’t care. It was that it didn’t matter if he did. His abject look of surrender to the buckets that poured over him was truly miserable. His hair framed his face with a mousy brown fringe. Water drops fell from his sharp nose, from his chin, and his hands were too wet to brush the rain away. They just moved the wet around. He plodded along. He would get on the subway platform and a pool would form around his soggy shoes.

A pair of young women walked on the other side of the street. Their rubber flip flops absorbed nothing. One woman grabbed her companion’s arm to stop her from tumbling into the rushing water as she slipped off her sandal. They both said sorry at the same time. They leaned into each other as they laughed. And they poked each other with their useless umbrellas. “Why are we holding them?” they laughed, again.

The rain ran down from their waists and then splashed up from the sidewalk to soak the hems of their dresses. One wore a skirt that had been flirty before the wet made it hug her legs. The other wore one of those cotton shifts with an overlay of lace. It was heavy now and was causing her legs to chafe.

The one with the chafing pointed to the mojito bar. They shook their umbrellas, squeezed out their dresses, shook their thick manes of curls and stepped out of the rain into the ice box of a bar where they took their spots.

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Abeyance

a dog pretzeled up on a bed

Too tired to finish a real post. Not for lack of effort. Not for lack of focus. Not for lack of concept. Despite a cascade of attempts that ended with the nodding head of a sleeping sickness, not because of anything but weariness.

The effort is not fruitful. It does not produce. Yet, and still, it was an effort.

But it isn’t the effort that gets published, but the words. These few words.

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Shiner Doc

This is the shore of Lake Superior, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. People are at the beach sunbathing. Those are NOT whitecaps but ice flows. Brrrr!

There was that time that I gave the Best Man a black eye. But I get ahead of myself.

When people think about Michigan, top of mind is cars and cold. Most folks don’t realize that in addition to the mitten–i.e., the Lower Peninsula–there is another slab of Michigan. It’s on the other side of the big Mackinac Bridge, which spans the four or five miles where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron kiss. It’s the Upper Peninsula (UP). The hearty people who live in the UP are called Upers.

It’s crossways the 320 miles between Wisconsin on the west and a narrow river separating the U.S. from Canada on the east. To the North is the greatest of the Great Lakes, Lake Superior. You can tell it’s the greatest lake because it tells you so. Superior.

My friend’s brother went to school in the UP. I never quite knew how he got there from Milwaukee, but he went to Tech. He studied business at a mining college. Tech is way up north in the Keweenaw Peninsula. [I know, yet another peninsula. What is it with these people?] This Peninsula juts deep into Lake Superior.

Another thing you should know about Lake Superior is that it is cold. Average Keweenaw water temp–when it peaks in the summer–is still less than 60°F. It’s big. It’s cold. And it has a reserved, maybe even a foreboding, personality. If you stare at it too long, it will brush you off. It doesn’t care.

It was at Tech, on the Keweenaw Peninsula, strutting out into that cold, indifferent, arrogant, Superior lake, where the brother met a girl. She was an engineering student at Tech. She must have come from that Scandinavian stock that settled in the UP. The immigrants that set up the saunas in every deer camp that encouraged a naked plunge into the snow. Her long blonde hair cascaded over her shoulder like Upper Tahquamenon Falls. She had a quick smile and a smart wit that was punctuated by the wink of her cerulean eye. And legs for days.

She was from Hancock, which was the town across the bridge from Houghton. When she and the brother decided to make it official, the wedding was in her home town.

So the brother was getting married, and we were off to the destination wedding. Destination far. But we knew some people along the way. And we had bug spray. Fact: the mosquitos can be as big as birds up there on some of the inland lakes. I don’t think, though, they stood a chance off the frigid, Lake High-and-Mighty.

As was our modus operandi, we were late. I think that’s why I don’t remember the rehearsal dinner. It was likely embarrassing.

We were in Marquette for a few days before the wedding and likely slept in or decided on more coffee. There may have also been a side trip to someone’s childhood memories at a lodge purportedly haunted by a murdered doctor of John Dillinger. The purveyor of that story, however, was the step-father who was known to enjoy an acid trip or two and would tell you about his out of body experiences, even without you showing any interest. We didn’t see any ghosts. But I was scared to death when my friend told me about the wild dogs that were on the premises. This was an odd story, too, because the feral beasts were the spawn of a beloved bitch from his childhood named Penny. When I heard a howl or maybe it was a rustle of a bush, I ran back to the car. It might have been Penny’s mad babies. 

It wasn’t my family. And it wasn’t my affair. And I was along for the ride. So we missed dinner. But we did not miss the bonfire.

I knew my friend’s mom. She was awesome. I knew why he loved her so much. She was very kind to me whenever I was on a visit. And she would always bum a menthol off of me. She and her floating spouse smoked regulars. I don’t know if she preferred the mint of my Virginia Slims or just wanted a change, but she was always a little excited to take one out of my pack and light it between her lips. She was pretty, but like a mom. She was probably 44 at that time.

I think we were hungry, but, like I said, blew through any food festivities. There were literally no food options at 9 p.m. in Hancock, Michigan. The all-night diner closed by eight. I bet it opened at 4 a.m., though. For the working folk.

The young people, that would be us and my friend’s brothers and the friends of the betrothed, were on the move. We tried to catch up with them by downing a few cans of whatever cheap beer we drank then. It was likely a Wisconsin brew, since we were close to that border. Somehow I am thinking that we also ate cheese balls for our dinner, on the way.

We left the SuperBeetle behind and climbed in the back of somebody’s truck. There were trucks and vans and cars in the caravan headed to the pitiless and Imperious Lake. For a bonfire.

I knew the groom-to-be. He was super amiable. He and his fiancée were gracious and begged off from the ongoing celebration. They had a big day coming. They took their leave.

This was the first time that I had met the other brother. He was the family favorite.

I had heard his name many times. He was the eldest. The smartest. The chosen. The most charming. He was a medical student at a prestigious Jesuit university in the east. I never thanked him for my introduction to Washington, D.C., which I met on a trip for his graduation. The ceremony was at the Kennedy Center. I was much affected by our nation’s capital and vowed to return. Spoiler alert: I did two years later, for the duration.

There may have been a few dozen of us, with coolers full of beer and melted ice. My friend and I were grubby from the drive and the {mis}adventure of the day, but nobody noticed. The cars rolled up to the Super Lake. Lake Superior. We piled out, grabbed beers, and stood between the fire and the water. The bonfire of driftwood was going as strong as it would. It wasn’t big, but it was a fire.

The brother was in our transport. He was erudite. He was also condescending to my friend. Maybe it was their relationship, the older and the younger sibling.

I thought the brother was obnoxious. He wasn’t my favorite. No, not at all. He wasn’t like he was advertised by his family. He was tall, but slight. I thought that he was throwing me menacing looks. And me, buoyed especially by a few downed cold cans, threw barbs back his way. I may have been rude. I likely was rude. But I was thinking that he was not boss over me, I was not part of the family dynamic that excused his vainglory. To me, he was an ass. Not an asset.

He was peeved by my disdain, and I liked that. I dismissed him by turning away and taking another beer from a cooler. They were less cool now.

A few people were stepping into the ice water that was lapping along the sand. Some rolled up their pants. One stripped to skivvies and jumped in. I found that amazing. I was not that drunk. I don’t think I could be that drunk. And if I were that drunk, hitting that cold water would reverse any drunk that made me that stupid. But, I was from downstate. These Upers were made of this Superior Lake, of the pines around us, of the dark gray smoke from the damp driftwood. Maybe the copper was in their veins. Not mine, though.

I was ambushed from behind. Lifted above his head onto his shoulders. My swagger quickly displaced my shock. The brother started walking to the water, telling me matter of factly that he was going to toss me in. I was feeling the control leaving me as he stepped into the water. He didn’t even have his pants rolled up. I cursed him loudly, in my deepest strongest voice. He laughed. I told him that he was going to turn around–because now I was unable to leave his shoulders without having a dunk tank experience. He laughed again. That was when I took my fist, and I pummeled it into his head as hard as I could.

He stopped. He was very angry now. Too angry to humiliate me any further because he was being humiliated, too. He took the strides back to the shore, and I jumped off. I found my friend and we had another beer. The brother left in the next car. We left a little bit later.

I was ill-prepared for a wedding, and I was grateful that it wasn’t fancy. The wedding party dressed in gowns and tuxedos, but the guests were more relaxed. The bride’s sisters helped me with my braid, and my friend’s mother fretted over the use of the wrinkle cream she brought. None of us twenty year olds had any clue how to apply it.

The groom and his best man presented themselves to the mother. She screamed. Not loud, but not a little. The best man had a black eye. The pictures!?! I said nothing, but the story came out. And the mother was not a little angry with me. It was unfathomable that her favorite would have earned that shiner.

I, on the other hand, stepped away and lit up one of those Virginia Slims and felt very, very, very proud of myself. Almost, Superior.

 

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Seeing The Light

The sun is casting long shadows on the deck.

It’s close to the longest day of the year. It is taking the maximum time for the sun to set. The day–or maybe the night–teases us with long shadows in the late daylight. You really don’t know who’s in charge.

Even if there wasn’t so much rain in May, this is the most green and most lush time of year. The greens are a selection from a big box of Crayola crayons. Green. Pine green. Yellow green and green yellow. Olive green. Spring green. Asparagus. Fern. Jungle green. Forest green.

Or the greens are mixed from a palette–there’s a squeeze of yellow, blue, red, black and white in tiny cups. Adding the yellow slowly to the blue and stirring, the swirls of bright disappear into a new color. Adding a little black makes a color that is the deepest green grass and vines. A tiny more black, and it’s the green at the base of those long shadows.

Just on the other side of the borderline of sunshine is the yellower green. Because of the contrast, the normally grass green glows more gold. From there the path to dark is not an evened ombré. There are freckles of sun that break through some of the boughs. There are stripes of yellow laid down by posts that make up a fence. There are flickers of light when the wind pushes the sunbrella to the left. And then to the right.

It’s not yet dusk, but it’s working on it.

At first it’s not clear that it’s there. Your head turns, but it might have been just an eye blinking. It seems like it happened again. Eyes are squeezed shut and reopened to clear your vision.

Then, you know. You begin to scour the patchwork of light and dark. You spy the passing gleam of a yellow dot. Gone. You brain foolishly trains your eyes on that spot. And then you see a glow a few feet away. It’s truly summer. The lightening bugs have arrived.

It’s silly that you didn’t see them since now you see three, wait, four, no that’s more like eight, turning their lights on and off as they pass along the hedges just above the ground. The appearance and disappearance of the light swells and ebbs like shallow breathing. It’s a slow build and drop that happens very quickly. How can it be both?

Fireflies are sweet and clumsy as they approach. Simply put your hand in their path and they will alight on fingers. They show no stress as they crawl across your palm, maybe even lighting up. You almost expect to be able to feel heat, but if there is any reaction, it’s imperceptible. Then the bug reaches the end of your hand and takes off, providing a wink from it’s abdomen.

You follow the path you think it’s on and see one more wink. You lose it as it flies on it’s unknowable path, and joins the dozens of other bulbs randomly blinking on and off as the sun finally sets and it’s now, really dusk and then night.

They have phosphorescence. They create their light from within. Be a firefly.

 

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