Fireflies

The luxuriant heaviness of the early evening August air deep in the Susquehanna Valley. 

I recall similar dusks when I was a boy in another place, so far away now in miles and years.  But this eternal moment is still here, now that I have a child, and then two children, with whom to live it again. 

Two nights, a decade apart, separating the youth of first one, then the second beautiful, miraculous child who came to grace my life, gifts I will never deserve.

We turn on the garden hose to water the flowers, and then take turns chasing and spraying one another with it. 

The loves of my life, first one, then ten years later, her sister, squeal with delight, shrieking in their efforts to evade the ropes of cold water, then cackling as they take the hose and pursue me across the grass. 

The sun has settled below the horizon, its faint glow still visible, and darkness warmly encroaches from all around, a dark not menacing or fearful but embracing, a caress of humid air slowly cooling, an invisible heavenly host descending to remind we two, then we three, that we are loved and protected. 

The fireflies have appeared, their tiny pointillism painting the air around us with a merry, sacred glow.  There is still enough light, just enough, to see them hover, black dots, in the air when their lights are extinguished, but in time they will be invisible save for those flickering instants when they activate their bioluminescence. 

How are they possible, these living things that somehow combine oxygen with various chemicals inside their bodies and produce a light that is yet cool enough for them to survive its burning in their innards?  And how are we, strange creatures that marvel at the fireflies and inquire and explore and eventually discover precisely how they can make the light they make and why? 

An unfathomed mystery, all of it.  Compelling and enchanting. 

Our yard is a bejeweled throne room, shining with royal splendor, the aristocracy of this world we make up, the parent and the child, sharing our flickering, transitory time on this globe together, unified in blood and in love and in overflowing, glorious spirit. 

My child, and my child, my children, my babies.  The inexpressible love I have for you.  These words do not approach it.  They are the best I can do in this doomed enterprise of language. 

Much better for us to simply inhabit our mutual love as together we excitedly go from one corner of the yard to another, drawn by the glowing, floating beings that make their slow way through the low-lying air, in search of something we do not reckon, gently reaching out to cup this one and then that one, careful not to harm the tiny denizens of some unknown heaven, and I hold my hand out to you to let them crawl the length of the extended finger and then, to your amazement, to take wing again and return to their inscrutable quest.

You ask me if this is the first night the fireflies have come out. 

“I believe it is.” 

“Do they get thirsty?” 

“Probably.”

“But won’t the water put out their light?”

“No, I don’t think we have to worry about that. They know how to keep that from happening.”

Our two cats, buried next to the fence where they shelter under a small tree, receive a drink of water from you.  “They might get thirsty too,” you reason. 

You are already integrated into the world unseen, you understand that our spirits mingle with those of our beloved fellows no longer here, we who remain to dance and play and laugh and love for them in their absence. 

You who changed your course, left your star, took off your wings, and traveled from the other world to be here with us, you came to warm these shared moments with what you found in those fireflies, the fire of eternity, and you are the justification of my life.