Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Firefly Summers

Hey Y'all,

Ok, so I am making up for not posting for a few days by posting twice today! I finished my presentation for tomorrow and even got a little bit of writing polished off for my response group lunch meeting for my writing class. As promised, I am going to share a little bit of this memoir on my blog. Enjoy and don't be to critical!

Firefly Summers

When I was little, I couldn’t wait for the sun to go to bed. During the summer, the sun always went to bed before I did. Because, after the sun set after yet another day, something magical happened in the backyard. The long steep steps from the back porch took on a truth or dare element. Did you dare go down the stairs, past “the door”, the one that led under the house? If you were brave enough to make it past the stairs and into the yard, there was the spooky eeriness of the clothesline that no longer ceased to exist. Clothes simply floated in the air with no sense of gravity, taking on the shapes of the unknown monsters that surely lurked somewhere in the yard full of dark.

If you were quiet enough during this time, well as quiet as you could be with the frogs bellowing and crickets taunting you with their chorus full chirps, a quiet happening would begin. Fireflies would embark on their peek-a-boo dance in the air. It was mesmerizing to watch them fly about with their secret Morse Code messages directing them. I always wanted to catch a few and take them back to the house with me to light up my room. But my little heart knew that they would not survive long. So I would sit there, in the yard, night after night watching their show.

As I grew older, I didn’t make it out as much to check out the nocturnal dances. But once in a while, a swift thought or memory would remind me of the summer nights of my childhood. Before long I would find myself descending the truth or dare stairs to watch and wonder, this time through much older eyes.

JKP
CAWP Summer 2008

No comments: