Chasing Fireflies
Memory: Fireflies in New Rochelle 1968
We left in the dark of night. Our parents would've woken my brother and I up from a dead sleep, but I'm sure we stayed awake for the whole six hour trip.
I remember counting the highway location markers as we got closer to our destination. What did they mean? They were counting down, I think... But counting down to what? My dad said they seemed to be coming every mile, but he also didn't know what they were counting down to. Speaking of my parents: I did the math when I was thinking of writing this blog. They were thirty-four and twenty-nine years of age, respectively. Around half my age now. The ages of my own children. That's a mind bender.
My Zia Bernardina and Zio Raffaelo were naturalized Americans. They, their home, their grown children, their yard... they were well beyond the wheelhouse of my seven year old's life experience. My life from 1965 to 1969 existed in several square miles of Park Ex, Montreal Quebec, where we were mostly either new immigrants or Anglos whose forebears had been in Quebec since the early 1800s. My world was neighbourhood kids playing in the streets, row houses, mom and pop shops, Blessed Edmond Campion Elementary School and the Madonna della Difessa church.
I remember one of their sons had just returned from serving in the army. That only happened on TV, but here he was in real life before me: a living, breathing, honest-to-goodness soldier. In retrospect, he'd have likely just come back from Vietnam. His name was Vincent ("Vincent", not Vincenzo!) and he was maybe the coolest human I'd encountered thus far.
He played the Bonanza television theme song on his six string, acoustic guitar. That was etched in my brain until I got my first guitar when I was ten years old. The first thing I learned to play was the opening ten notes of Bonanza. It was all about the rhythm. The first eight notes are the same :)
New Rochelle, New York. 1968. Zia Bernardina and Zio Raffaeli. This was different. There was a fireplace. Ceilings were high. Baseboards were dark and wide. Doors were real oak. Wainscotting adorned the walls. There was a real backyard with mature trees. My aunt's family lived in this massive two story house with a basement all by themselves. We lived in a duplex. My mother, father, brother and grandparents on the main floor. My uncle, aunt and their three kids lived upstairs. We shared a basement where we made wine, sausages, killed chickens and goats; and had epic, extended family parties.
My mother tells me that we were in New Rochelle twice. I'm sure these memories are jumbled from our three to four visits to the States in the late sixties and early seventies. In Summer of 68, we also visited an uncle on my mother's side of the family. I remember he had a watermelon farm. Watermelon was in season. My parents marvelled that we'd have part of a freshly picked and sliced watermelon and throw away what we didn't finish eating. A few hours later, we'd repeat the process. Such delicious watermelon, such waste. My brother and I would see how far we could spit seeds in their yard.
In Summer of 1971, we stayed with the same aunt and uncle for a wedding on Long Island. Another time -- around that same era -- we were in Groton, Connecticut visiting yet another uncle (Zio Ilario) on my mother's side.
I remember my brother and I -- Salvatore and Rocco -- met and played with two boys our exact age. Their names: Salvatore and Rocco.
And now to the memory of fireflies. We were playing in some relative's backyard. I remember there were twenty or thirty people all told -- mostly relatives and some *paisanos. Lots of kids (more than just the two Salvatores and two Roccos). We hung out through the brilliant afternoon, delicious Italo-American repast, gorgeous New York dusk and eventual July dark. That's when the fireflies came out.
I'd never seen fireflies. We ran and chased. One firefly might've been a dream. But after so many fireflies... Every new firefly was a miracle. Now they are a memory that I'm trying to recall and keep alive, like so many well loved poems from my undergrad that sparked things in me that had never been sparked before: inexorable feelings and thoughts that give your soul arrhythmia and make you say, what was that? I think it's why, of all my undergrad study of literature, I connected most with the Romantic mystic poets.
As we were running and chasing fireflies and seeing where they landed, wondering How long can they possibly stay lit? How is this happening? I noticed an older -- older? she might have been twenty -- relative watching us with a smile and a look that I, at the time, didn't quite understand. All I knew was that her attention was absolutely fixed on us. I sensed both a kind of love or admiration and something else I couldn't identify. Now I know: it was loss. Finally, she said to us something like, "This is special. This night is special. Always remember what you're feeling now."
And now I know that as a twenty-year-old or a forty-year-old or a sixty-four year old or a ninety-three year old, we no longer chase fireflies. But if we try hard enough, we might remember the first time we saw a firefly or a sunset or tall grass in Autumn dusk or highway markers.
For me, this fills me with a sense of both wonder and loss. And it makes me wonder if there are still fireflies to chase even at my age, albeit not with the same sense of innocence and wonder of childhood. I believe it is also a coming to peace, knowing that the light both dims like an elusive dream as we age and burns bright in those younger than we are -- those who are discovering their own fireflies for the very first time.
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A few months after writing this I stumbled across the Welsh word "hireath" which is a blend of homesickness, nostalgia and longing; a pull on the heart that conveys a distinct feeling of missing something irretrievably lost.
*paisanos... I'm pretty sure the plural of "paisano" is "paisani" but I couldn't verify that anywhere.
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