Fireflies!

Verity just turned five, two days ago. Also this week she started making new friends at day care near her Mom's new job downtown.

In the evening we had a refreshing storm with lightening, a darkened sky, and nice loud thunder along with heavy rain. All of this was plenty to delight a little girl, but about one minute before I took this picture, little Verity saw the light of a firefly for the very first time. There aren't any in California, where she's from.

I grew up playing with "lightening bugs" (as we called them), so they're just part of summer to me, but those little creatures have never lost their magic. For those who have never seen them, they light up only around dusk, and only in the beginning of the summer. They are about the size of a large fly but only the lamp in their abdomen makes them interesting. A firefly is entirely gentle and harmless. It's great to see a long meadow with thousands of them flashing away.

Once in a while over the years, I'll be with someone who has not been in this region, in this month, at this particular hour, and out-of-doors, near vegetation. They say to me suddenly, "What? Bob, what is that? --that light?"

The reasons why they float around with lamps in their pants have been taught to me a number of times, but I always forget. It's what fireflies do. As far as I'm concerned, they do it so that a person of any age or any disposition can feel these little moments of surprise and joy, just as Verity did tonight.