You go outside, and it seems the whole neighborhood is asleep.
And there are fireflies. Not one or two. At least five or six. Why are they surprising? Why do they bring hope? Reassurance? Reassurance that with everything going on in the world, all is right with the trees and the stars, and you can still stand in the quiet, and take in the magic of the universe.
Excitement and high pitched voices. Nothing you could recognize as words. It wouldn’t be going too far to call it squealing.
The sound of kids. The sound of kids heading somewhere with the pace they use when it’s just them. Kids with no grown-ups holding them back. Like … FREEDOM!
After a full minute of just sounds moving up the trail, two boys came around the bend on bikes. Maybe eight years old. Helmets. Full speed. Wheels bouncing over bumpy dirt. You know the rhythm of left/right, left/right. That standing-up kind of pedaling kids use when they want to go as fast as they can. All the time, their almost-yelling-we’re-so-excited-voices. Not indoor voices. No, definitely outdoor voices.
They looked and sounded like they’d been in timeout for a week, and were just released. Or they were pals who hadn’t seen each other for a long time. They sounded like it was Halloween night, and they just left home for a couple hours of fun, fun, fun. It sounded like the last day of school, in normal times.
Kids have their own version of YAY.
A year in pandemic is a bit like a long afternoon on the front porch. The same kind of boredom, but without the pleasant sense of relaxing. The same kind of inertia, but without the sweet breeze playing at the hair on the back of your head.
After months and months, the possibility you’ll come up with some motivation to think, oh yeah, that’s what I want to do…that possibility’s remote. It’s more like, let’s see, you ought to get up and clean out a couple of drawers. The other day I found a dollar bill in an old purse I hadn’t used in years. There was a spark of excitement, sort of delight, that lasted about one minute. Maybe I hoped it was a twenty dollar bill. At least a five.
etikser 