Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Lightning Bug Time

It never seems like seasons take as long as they used to.  Spring moved so slowly (back when we used to have spring; you young people might have liked it, it was a beautiful time, following this quaint thing we used to call "winter"), you could ache just waiting for the days to get a little longer.

A few minutes ago, it was February.  Today, it was 90 again, and it is May - and the daylight stayed until eight o'clock.  In a few minutes, it will be June - we'll have our longest day - it will be time to notice nights getting longer again.

Three years it's been, since I saw X the last time, and it hardly feels like time's moved at all.  It did its job with the sense of loss, when he did not come home that December.  But seeing him this past weekend - it didn't feel like all that much time had passed, and it didn't seem to *take* that long between, to me.  I don't invite more years to pass before I ever see his face again.  But I can do them, at this point, standing on my head.  It seems nothing anymore.

It may have been a hallucination; but yesterday I thought I saw a lightning bug.  Would have sworn - but no other glimmers appeared.  In my experience, you don't usually see one without seeing others.

Reassuring, that - that it may still be too early in the year, for anything - that time isn't simply blurring and homogenizing completely.  We didn't have winter, and aren't getting spring.  But the lightning bugs will not betray me.


Even so - once they do come (the bats have, though the missed a few other bugs who didn't miss *me*), they'll be gone again so soon.  Every year I can't wait to see the first one - and moments later I realize the last one has come and gone and I missed it.

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