Lightning Bugs

   Six years ago I was surprised to get a postcard from Mary Kay Tiefel Hedges, the mother of Robbie, my best friend growing up on North 8th Street in Marshall, Illinois.  It said “I’m sending you something that reminded me of the summers when you girls were growing up.”  

    Robbie and I grew up in a small town in the days before houses were air conditioned, before televisions had kids’ programming on all day long, before video games, ipods, and dvd players were invented, before most mothers worked and most kids spent their days at day camps or sports camps.  We spent our summer days outside with a big group of neighborhood kids playing hopscotch and baseball, roller skating, running through sprinklers, swimming in backyard kiddie pools, daydreaming, coloring, riding bikes, playing paper dolls, playing monopoly, playing school, playing house, jumping rope, putting on plays, running kool-ade stands.

    I spent the week before Mary Kay’s package arrived trying to imagine what she had found that reminded her of those long ago idyllic summer days.  Could she be sending colored chalk for making hopscotch squares or even a perfect flat throwing rock?   Maybe a skate key, like the ones we used to wear tied around our necks?  Maybe she had found an old set of Betsy McCall paper dolls like the ones we used to scatter all around her living room?  MIckey Mouse ears?  A Davie Crockett coonskin cap?  Bright red paraffin lips?  A Nancy Drew book?  To this day I always think of Mary Kay whenever I eat cinnamon toast, a favorite treat I first tasted in her kitchen, but I’m pretty sure that she wasn’t sending a tin of cinnamon.

    Mary Kay’s package finally arrived several days later.  I tore it open to find.... A Bug Jar!!!  A bug jar just like the old mayonnaise jars that we used to carry around on warm summer nights and fill with the lightning bugs that flashed and flitted and turned those evenings into magic times.  Looking at the jar and laughing, I remembered so many evenings running through yards with Robbie, chasing the illusive creatures that would blink right in front of you and then disappear into the darkness as you grabbed for one and too often ended up empty handed until you spotted another one blinking again a few steps away and off you ran.  I remember filling the bottom of the jar with grass just in case the lightning bugs wanted something to eat and poking holes in the lid so that the poor creatures could breathe.  I remember sometimes crawling into bed and falling asleep watching a jarful of lightning bugs blinking away as they climbed up the sides of the jar, but more often my mother convincing me to free my captives before I went inside.  My mother was wise in the ways of lightning bugs because watching the bugs crawl to the very top of my jar and then launch themselves off into the night was another kind of magic, much better than waking in the morning to find them dead at the bottom of the jar.  

    My prime lightning bug catching days were back in the 1950’s. It’s been more than fifty years since Robbie and I spent summer evenings chasing after lightning bugs.  These days there seems to be fewer lightning bugs flitting around and fewer children chasing after them.  Although my four children grew up in the era of air conditioning and 24-hour children’s programming on tv, they, like me, also grew up in a neighborhood filled with children and with a mother who shoved them out of the house on warm summer nights to play Kick the Can and Hide and Seek--and to chase after lightning bugs.  (Johanna was the acknowledged neighborhood lightning bug champion.  My most patient child, her jar always contained the most bugs.  My softest hearted child, she always was the first to set her bugs free before bedtime.)  But it’s been years since they or I have captured a lightning bug.

    Not everything has improved in the last fifty years.  But my new bug jar is certainly the new improved version.  Although the jar arrived without air holes poked into the top, it came with something better.  It came with its own battery operated lightning bugs.  Last night I crawled into bed and fell asleep watching my jarful of lightning bugs happily blinking away.  And when I woke up in the morning they were all still blinking!

    Mary Kay died several years ago, but my lightning bug jar blinks on.  Already this spring the days are filled with sunshine and the evenings are growing warmer.  Soon, soon the lightning bugs will begin their summer dance.  

    Mary Kay’s lighting bug jar was a truly magical gift, reminding me again of the magic of memories, the magic of summer, and the magic of childhood friendships that last a lifetime.