Grandpa’s Lightning Bugs

Posted: June 30th, 2010 | Filed under: All Submitted Stories, Friends and Family, Insects

By Drex M.

Grandpa “D” loved to watch his granddaughters stalk evasive fireflies, as they darted into the shadows backlit by purple hues on the fade side of day. His mind raced back to an earlier time, when these little ones were just hopes for the future hidden away in the hearts of young parents.

It had been twenty years earlier when the father of these young girls was, himself, a fourth grade graduate, hoping against all hope that summer would last, well, almost forever. Michael and his younger brother, Mark, would leap from the porch at twilight time and chase the endless supply of fireflies that arose from the grass like dew in reverse or sparkling mist. The fireflies won almost every contest as they enticed the boys with their wondrous lamps, hovering and anticipating just the right moment when a little arm, jar in hand, would reach heavenward. Then these tiny creatures could capriciously dart even further away with a newfound speed that sent the boys into waves of giggles and outright laughter.

Their father, “D,” reminded his sons that his very own Grandfather had called fireflies “lightening bugs,” because they flickered unpredictably – just like summer lightening. “D’s” Grandfather, Lorenzo, had come from the “old country” and had adopted a lot of old, but new to him, sayings from his adopted West Virginia, like calling skunks “pole cats,” probably due to the pole like strip of white which scurried down each critter’s back. “D’s” youngest son, Joe, kept alive his great-grandfather’s tradition of creative descriptions. Little Joe called the fireflies “corn bugs,” because it appeared that someone had drilled a kernel of corn into the bug’s backside.

As “D” watched his sons chase the bugs, he thought to himself that life would never be better than at this moment. In only one sense was this true, because the parenting time was so fleeting. Not nearly enough bedtime stories were read or relished as these boys grew, and “D” always regretted the opportunities lost…

But in another sense, life was full of fruitful parent promises that could be peeled at harvest moments. This was as it had always had been.

Chasing “lightening bugs” had always been a “right of passage” through childhood from generation to generation of giggling children in “D’s” family, and now twenty years later, an older and wiser Grandpa “D” was watching his son’s daughters chase the elusive fireflies of July. Grandpa “D” relished this moment as he had only once before, and he thought once again that life would never be better than at this moment.

Over the course of the next months, a Grandpa who more deeply appreciated his children and his children’s children gathered up old storybooks and passed them along like the greatest treasure one could possibly receive. Like the “lightening bugs” from his own youth, a much wiser Grandpa knew that a love for the “little lights of summer” and cherishing that which is most important was being passed to an emerging generation of future matriarchs and eager chasers of the elusive future fireflies…