“You are not going out with that boy unless his parents are driving and that's that. I'm not just Spitting Grits here, young lady!”

. . . My father, John Thomas Cravey, USAF, to me in 1956.
Bookmark and Share

Spring 2014: A Lone Firefly

boy-catching-fireflies
We are now at the spring equinox. We’ve had a bad winter and all the signs of spring are late. Except for one that I know of.
Last night, sitting on the patio wrapped in a throw, I saw the first firefly, twinkling, blinking, blinging, alone, against the dark night sky and woods behind my house. At first I thought it had to be a tower’s light blinking like a metronome; then I thought a faint star, blinking as the trees swayed; then a small aircraft aiming for the airport runway lights. No, it was none of those.
Solitary and alone, it blinked and twinkled randomly inside an imaginary square of space against a dark background. At least the blinking seemed random from the perspective of being a human rather than another lonely firefly.
Suddenly I wondered if fireflies can be alone. What happens to a lone twinking, twinking, twinking firefly unable to fulfill it biological imperative to blink and mate?
 
 
firefly
Except where noted, pictures are found at: http://www.firefly.org/firefly-pictures.html
 
 
I thought of the upcoming Night of the Fairies. Could it come this early, after such a cold winter? I will be alert every night. Meanwhile, below is the original Spittin’ Grits post about that magical night:

Night of the Fairies
I saw the first lone glittering light just after dark one evening last week, but the nights are still cool, going down to the low 40s. Still, I know the Night of the Fairies must be close; a few seasonably warm days and nights is all it will take. I will watch each night.
I first saw this phenomenon in 1999, I think. It was astonishing. This event happens each year sometime after the spring equinox depending on how early we begin to get warm days and nights. Late March and early April days and nights in the lower South can come as a surprise. They whisper a promise just as winter is dying. Most of us gardeners end up planting our flowers too early in still cold soil, and they end up damaged or dead from the last inevitable cold spell.
This night was in early April, when the days warm up and linger for just a while into the night, nights for a fire in the patio fire pit, for wrapping up in a shawl, and for just sitting. This night I could barely see at the edge of the woods the silhouetted trees’ new growth. Spring would come.
My eyes on the wood’s growing darkness, dusk turned into early evening. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the darkness was transformed with small, twinkling lights rising in unison up from the earth.
 
Rackham-titania
A million glittering stars against a dark sky. A Fairy Woodland come to life. Shakespeare’s Titania and Oberon waking in spring before their midsummer night’s dream. Thumbelina. Tinkerbelle. Fairies from the children’s books my grandmother read to me. A spectacle of diamonds and crystals.
 
The art poster of Arthur Rackham’s Titania, Queen of the Fairies, from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” can be purchased here:http://www.artsycraftsy.com/rackham/msd_titania.html
 
 Fairies away! We shall chide downright if longer I stay!
 
 









As the glittering mass rose up from the wood’s bed of moist leaves, they began to float away from each other, some higher and higher, some drifting into the backyards of the surrounding houses, some toward the patio. They magically became fireflies for the upcoming summer.
 
“It must be the night they rise from hibernation,” I said out loud to no one. I stood transfixed.
 
 
The photo below is one of a series of time-lapse pictures of fireflies: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/12/stunning-time-lapse-photographs-of-gold-fireflies-in-japan/
 
firefly-timelapse
The cold air caught my attention and I moved closer to the fire.
The fireflies continued this fantastical ritual for some nights to come, but as spring became early summer, they emerged from this place in fewer and fewer numbers. They simply appeared in the summer nights.
I wondered that night if this performance was some kind of gift or sign, never to return again, like a rainbow’s pot of gold.
Each year I have waited for this Night of the Fairies. It has returned year after year. It could happen tonight or tomorrow night.
But this special gift also brings some sadness. Several years after this first event, I asked my daughter to watch for it with me. It happened. I thought this kind of beauty could add something to my daughter’s dismal existence that was dominated by her addictions to drugs. She watched in what I thought was a sense of wonder.
“Oh, man,” she said. “This is cool. It’s like being on LSD.”
I think that night was my first intimation that my daughter’s kind of addiction is a lot bigger than herself and me and her father all put together. By then it seemed that the addictions were also bigger than treatment programs.
Unfortunately, that fear has been borne out.
Anyway, I will be watching the woods for the next several nights, waiting for this annual gift. I look forward to showing it to my granddaughter, Joanna Leigh.








































Lesson One: Get Over It

 

“Jo,” called Joanna Leigh from the bottom of the stairs. “Can you come here?”

 

“What ‘cha need, honey?” I called back from my study, located up the stairs and down the hall.

 

“I need you.”

 

I got up and walked down the hall and to the stair landing. There she stood at the bottom of the stairs. “What do you need?” I asked, thinking that everything looked ok. She started up, so I began walking back to my study. She followed.

 

My granddaughter has a bit of “separation anxiety” layered over the normal (I think) dose of “fear of the dark.” If I leave the kitchen and she suddenly doesn’t hear “kitchen noises” as she’s watching favorite programs in the den, she comes looking for me. She follows me around, even if I have to take the garbage out. Truth? It drives me crazy even as I understand why: Her mommy disappeared on her.

 

So, she followed me into my study instead of going to her room, which is right at the top of the stairs. I said, “You can go in your room and draw at your art table or read a book or change Saige’s clothes while I finish what I’m working on.”

 

“But I can’t,” she said.

 

“What??” I replied too harshly. “This is exasperating, Joanna Leigh.”

 

“But my room is dark. And Papa’s room is dark. And his bathroom is dark.”

 

“Ok, you and I are going to go turn on some lights. But first, we need to have a talk about this AGAIN. What are you scared of?”

 

“I don’t know. It’s just that I saw some eyes looking at me under my bed.”

 

“Joanna Leigh,” I said, “you are absolutely going to have to get over this. There are NO eyes under your bed. If you’re stay scared like this, you’ll never be able to explore stuff, go places, have fun. You’ve got to GET OVER IT, I said.

 

She dropped her eyes. Then she said, “Can I write that down on your note pad?”

 

She pointed to the yellow sticky notes. “Yes, here.” She wrote on several yellow stickies while I tried to finish what I was doing.

 

Still it drives me nutsy, and I’ve been trying to help her overcome those ideas. One of my main goals is to help her find a good sense of independence. She’s going to have to take care of herself sooner than she should have to, I’m afraid.

 

Lesson Two: Deal with It

The next evening, she came into my study and said, “Jo, how do I get over it?”

 

Oh, I felt so bad. Am I being too harsh? Am I making her more insecure? And on and on with my own fears that I’m not doing a good job raising my granddaughter, who will have to face difficulties at too young an age.

 

“Honey, you just have to look at your fears straight in the face and deal with it. You have to practice not being afraid. And deal with it.”

 

She thought. Then she said, “You mean like Elsa and Ana had to face theirs in ‘Frozen’?”

 

Lesson Three: The Big One

 

The last lesson was for me.

 

The next morning I went in her room to straighten up and make up her bed. I found these taped to headboard and vanity:

 

Below: This sticky on her headboard says: “From Jo (me) to Joanna (Joanna Leigh); (right) says To Joanna (Joanna Leigh) From Joanna (herself, a reminder)

 

 

Later I went to straighten up the kitchen. On the counter I found this: Today heart copy

 

Lesson: Am I lucky, or what?

 

Blog Widget by LinkWithin
 
Spittin' Grits. Copyright © 2009 Joanna C. Hutt. All rights reserved. | Contact