Fireflies bring back memories

Yesterday when I went to see The Human-Animal Bond art show at the Spokane Art School (see next page), I had no idea I would float back in time to my childhood in Louisiana. It was all because of Jack Dollhausen’s piece, “Midwest Summer Night’s Dream (Bug Jar).”

It was just a jar with a metal lid. But it was what the jar contained that did it for me. Dollhausen had arranged small red lights in a seemingly haphazard manner. They sparkled intermittently, a tangle of unpredictable light. Fireflies. Lightning bugs.

I was 4 again and with my parents one early summer evening at a state park in southern Louisiana. We sit on a dock. Cypress trees draped in Spanish moss reach skyward. Faint starlight seeps through gray branches. Then we see them. One gold spark followed by another and another. It’s a random pattern across night’s dark canvas.

I question my mother intensely. What are they? Where do they come from? Are they invisible during daylight? And she tells me a magical tall-tale I carry with me into adulthood. “They are fairies,” she said. “And when they glow, it’s because they are trying to tell you a secret.”

Years later I try this on my three younger brothers. I don’t know who believed me, but they appeased me enough to gain my help in the trapping of these lightning bugs. I’d guess we’d catch about 10 lightning bugs per jelly jar. The jar always ended up on the youngest bedside table, glittering into early morning hours. Someone usually let them go the next day – they weren’t any fun in daylight.

When I see Dollhausen’s piece, I instinctively want to lean in and press my ear to the glass. But of course I don’t. I steady myself, remember my place. I know now that these soft glowings are actually beetles.

In fact, Ohio State University has a Web site dedicated to fireflies. The light the beetles generate is actually a chemical reaction produced when luciferin, luciferase, ATP and oxygen combine. This is much too concrete for my childhood fantasy, and I click off just after reading that there are no glowing beetles in this area. In fact, there are no glowing beetles “west of about the middle of Kansas.”

When I told my friend and Spokane native Gail Forsgreen this fact, she said that she’d never seen fireflies until she was an adult. “When I went to New Jersey to visit a friend, we were sitting on their porch at about 8 at night. All of a sudden these little things started lighting up everywhere,” she said. “When I asked what they were, my friend was really surprised that I’d never seen fireflies before.”

“Honestly,” she said. “I can see myself going back East, just to see fireflies.”

I know exactly what she means. Last summer, when visiting my grandparents in Massachusetts, I was sitting still on their deck one evening trying to cool off after a warm day. The first few flying sparkles were a surprise. It’s amazing the things we forget, how we compartmentalize our memory. It took a minute to realize what they were, but once I did, the effect was the same as Dollhausen’s piece. All wonder and delight. I can’t wait to visit this year.