Karma

A couple of days ago I was on my bike coming off of a three-hour ride down to Saline, MI and back when a firefly landed on my pants. Night was beginning to fall, meaning it was around 9:30 or so, and I had seen the little fellow light up a few moments before he latched on to me. "That's curious," I thought. I was in the middle of climbing a hill, so I didn't have time to brush him off, nor did I want to out of fear of crushing him. (Why does every arthropod outside of a ladybug get assigned a male pronoun?)

At the first convenient stop, a parking lot behind an apartment complex at the top of the hill, I pulled off to the side to consider what I should do next. I'd often tried to catch fireflies while on my bike, mainly as an exercise in dexterity, but never successfully done so. And now, here one was. Others flew lazily in the air ahead of me. My mind wandered to childhood possibilities of making a firefly lantern, as if I was some character out of a faerie tale! I thought about whether any items in my backpack could be used as a container, preferably something transparent. I'd brought no water with me and so had no bottle. The only possibility was my eyeglass case where I swapped glasses for sunglasses during my rides.

I unzipped the small pocket on the front of my backpack and took out the eyeglass case. The firefly had crawled to the outside seam of my pants and appeared to have no desire to leave. Perhaps it was fate that tonight I'd make my own firefly lantern -- the idea had never even occurred to me while growing up in arid North texas. I pried the case open, gently coaxed the firefly in, and snapped the case shut. I slipped the case into its pocket, and I was off again.

A few minutes later the sky had grown dark, and I was coasting into my apartment complex. When I finally hauled my bike up the stairs and got into my apartment, I immediately went to the kitchen cabinet in which I kept empty glass jars. I had a whole shelf of them (habit, I suppose) but no cheesecloth to strap across the top. I thought about nailing a hole into the lid of one, but I'd probably end up making it too big and allowing the firefly to escape. A lid held on loosely would have to do.

That evening, after I'd moved the firefly into his new home, I went out to a bar to meet some friends. Two hours and a couple of drinks later, I was back at my apartment, a little woozy but mostly exhausted by the ride and the late hour. I passed out in bed, glasses on.

The next morning I awoke to find that one of the nosepads on my glasses had broken off, probably the result of my having rolled on to my face during the night. Or was it something else? Glasses crooked on my face, I walked out to my breakfast table where I had put the jar with my firefly friend. Inside he was still climbing up and down the sides like a Sisyphus in miniature. It didn't escape me that I had kept him in the eyeglass case for the bumpy, dark ride home last night.

I took the jar out to my balcony door, opened the jar top, and shook him free. I looked at the tops of the trees next to the road, alit from the still early sun, and wondered how many other childhood aspirations I'd have to leave by the wayside.