Fireflies At Night

While I was watching the fireflies drift across the lawn this evening, I tried to decide if I had anything worthwhile to say about Father’s Day.

It’s true - I didn’t have a Dad who taught me things like how to ride a bike, or drive a car, or how a man should treat me.

But, it doesn’t bother me as much as you might think.

He didn’t give me conventional gifts like safety or nurturing. But I didn’t leave empty-handed.

He gave me his wild, aching heart.

That means a lot of things. But mostly it means this:

I need these fireflies blinking like stars in the grass. I need the throaty chorus of frogs echoing across the yard.

Nothing can compare to the sound of summer on a hot, humid night, especially when the cicadas join in.

I need those sounds.

Because they remind me that this is the real world. The one that connects us to everything else.

Sometimes I forget.

I get lost in the human world - the one of headlines and heartbreak, of war and hatred - and I spiral.

Maybe without this wild heart, I wouldn’t understand the shiver of fear and awe when a pack of coyotes howls in the distance. Maybe it wouldn’t make me feel so alive and sane all at the same time.

Maybe I’d be content living in a box, working in one, driving in one. Maybe I’d be ok never seeing a sunset on any shore but my own.

My dad wasn’t a supervillain. He was just a hurt man, whose demons were on top of him. And, as we all know, hurt people hurt people.

But doesn’t that make him kind of… relatable? Aren’t we all wrestling with something? Aren’t we all succeeding and failing to various degrees?

And hasn’t the pain been a gift too? Hasn’t it made me want to break the cycle, to heal myself instead of hurt others?

And isn’t that kind of a big deal?

It does not excuse the monsters under the bed.

It’s just my humble way of saying that we should take the things that make us stronger, and set the rest down.

Because carrying the pain of yesterday into today does not make anything easier.