I Miss Fireflies

The other day, a friend posted an instagram story of the fireflies at dusk in her neighborhood. I stopped and realized that I missed seeing fireflies. They aren’t on my mind everyday and my life is unaffected without them but when I say I miss fireflies, this is what I think of: 

In Chicago, my grandparents had a big backyard with trees that we would run around in. As the sun set, it would be flooded with fireflies or “lightning bugs” as we always called them. We would run around catching them and putting them in a cup with holes in it so they could breathe. We caught them but we never wanted to cause any harm. There were blackberries that grew on the trees. We weren’t allowed to eat them but we would pick them, throw them at each other, and squish them to get the dark color all over our hands. There was a huge tree trunk right in the center that we treated like home plate when playing backyard baseball. It was safe territory when playing tag. These are all fireflies to me. 

It has always been hard living so far from the people and places I grew with. The hardest part about living in different cities and visiting places that are home to the people you love is that there will always be fireflies. Not fireflies themselves but an equivalent. Blackberries. Tree trunks. Small things that you miss dearly.

I love Arizona. I live here, I’m growing here now, and I do call it home. It’s okay to leave what you know and grow where you land. It’s good to love everything about it but it’s also okay to miss fireflies when you think about them.