Night Lights

For most of my life, summer was hot days and cool nights studded with flying stars. I remember the nights the best, when the sun would set, and the sky would darken into that gray haze that softens every shadow and line. The brilliant golds and greens would be replaced by cooler colors. The cut grass seemed less prickly at these times, although that might have been because I was distracted by the sight.

This time, the time caught between full dark and sunset gray, was my favorite for many reasons. Partly because of the colors. For all the boldness of daylight, nighttime called to me. The darker pallet was more soothing on my light sensitive eyes. The quiet stillness that suffused this time was welcoming, too. Here, diurnal creatures went to their beds, while nocturnal creatures would start to wake up. Slowly and surely, the air would fill with the sounds of cicadas. Soft hoots perpetrated the deepening night. Bugs would start swarming around the light pole in the yard, and then the bats would appear, swooping through the dusk to scoop up their meals. But wonderful as these sights were, they did not hold my attention.

It was the fireflies that did.

They would drift up from the grass and the azalea bushes by the front porch. Flickers of light that caught my attention before disappearing again. On. Off. Darkness. On again. Off again. Darkness once more. Around the softness of dusk, they would rise, the bright flash of their abdomens highlighting their flight up. As the dark deepened, they would spread out, their flashes becoming harder to find.

And I loved it. Dusk was hunting time, and I would exit the back doors and dance upon the grass, throwing my gaze around and around. There! A flash, blazing yellow, before disappearing once more. I would stare into space, searching for a small flitting form — there! I lunged. My hands snapped onto nothing. A yellow signal a few feet to my left alerted me to my mistake.  

I could spend hours like that, running barefoot across the grass while I tried to snatch the fireflies from the air. Occasionally, I succeeded, my hand closing around a little body. Little black shells edged in white protecting delicate wings. The small red plate with black dot. Twitching antenna. I would watch as it crawled along my hand, occasionally flashing its light against my palm, before finally it would crack open that shell, wings unfurling to carry it aloft.

There is a trick to catching fireflies that I learned as the years passed. I couldn’t tear off after every flash. Instead, I would wait, feet planted in the grass, and watch. Watch for that flash of light, most often white or yellow, but occasionally blue or green. Once I would find it, I would search for the bug, then move that way. Carefully, slowly, until I’d managed to separate a fleeting form from the darkness and closed my hands around it.

I spent much of my childhood like this. Fireflies were an oft common thing, and as I grew up, my fascination faded. Their magic dimmed. They became nothing more than bugs that signaled to find mates in the dark, the wonder they had carried drained away.

As if in connection to my lessening regard, the number of fireflies dropped as well. I would see less and less than the years went by, but it never really hit how little they had dropped until I was driving home from fencing one night.

I pulled into my driveway, the car bouncing as it navigated the rain-washed grooves in the gravel. It was that magical, twilight time again. The trees and grass were covered by soft shadows. That was when I noticed for the first time the lack of flashing lights. I parked my car and sat for the longest time, staring out the window at my yard. It was summer. The air conditioning had cooled the previous day’s heat from my brow.

But there were not as many fireflies as I had been expecting.

Carefully, I turned off my car and set the keys in the cup holder. Lights off, door open. I stepped around it, the silver of the faded paint job ghostly in the pale light. I stepped into the grass. We hadn’t mowed in a while. Grass tickled my legs.

I waited. I don’t know how long I waited, but I waited. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes, but it felt like forever that I counted my breaths in the quiet night. The silence sank in. This late, there should have been more noises. But it was just silence, broken by the occasional hoot of an owl.

Finally, I saw it. A flash of green light. My eyes picked through the darkness. Remembering the way I had used to catch fireflies so many years ago, I started forwards, slow and careful. Movement. A small shape, barely seen through the dark. My hands lashed out and closed around the form. I brought them to my face and opened them up.

The firefly in my hands was small. Scrawny. So obviously young that it almost hurt to see. I held my breath like one wrong movement would make it disappear. Its claws pricked my skin. The shell split. It flew off, and I let it go. Another flash of a green light was the answer to its release.

Across the yard, a lone white light flickered.

I stood there. Slowly, my hands dropped to my sides. My clothes stuck to my skin, sweat dried and dirty. My breath came out in slow gasps. Gone. Gone. Those seeming miracles from my childhood were disappearing one by one.

And it was there, standing in the grass with my car still warm and the darkness around me, that I realized just how fragile this world could be.