Bug, Interrupted

by Jane Meneely

Who was I setting free that night: myself, my daughter, or just the fireflies?

Summer nights on the Eastern Shore, when the sun finally settles below the lip of the land and a misty haze hangs like netting from the tops of the trees, the magic begins. Slowly at first, like dancers drifting onto a dance floor, fireflies begin to wink through the tall grass that rings our field. When I was a kid, this was the signal for me to race through the dark, flailing an open jam jar at the shimmering creatures. I’d try to scoop them all inside my jar so I could carry the magic with me forever. Then came the abrupt call to bed, and I’d punch holes in the jar lid with an ice pick and set the glassy cage on my night table.

I’d settle into my pillow to watch the firefly shadows on my walls. I thought they must be fairies, ready to transform into their true gauzy, winged selves while I slept. If I could stay awake long enough, I’d be able to get a glimpse of them and make a wish. Of course I would let them go in the morning. But morning would come, and I’d have a jar full of dead bugs on my table—little dried husks. I don’t know when it dawned on me that I’d been the instrument of their deaths, but I know at some point I stopped chasing fireflies and just sat on my porch and watched them, feeling vaguely guilty about the countless generations I’d snuffed.

Eventually I grew up and came to have a daughter of my own. She too would watch the flickers fill the evening. On the Shore they swarm through the woods at night, great clouds of flashing beacons moving every which way. When Lindsay was big enough, she toddled after them, cupping her hands to catch them and gazing in wonder at the firefly blinking on her palm. And then came the jam jars, and she too would scoop and swipe in the dark, collecting a treasure-trove of flashing delight.

“I must have caught a hundred of them,” she said one night, breathless from careening around in the field. Sweat made its way in muddy streaks down her cheeks. Jagged snags of blood seeped from her bare calves where the blackberry brambles had grabbed her. She waved the jar triumphantly, and indeed she had captured a full horde of fireflies. “I’m going to put it next to my bed tonight,” she declared. “It will be my night-light.”

We washed off the sweat and prickles and she settled into bed. The jam jar stood straight and tall on the night table, its soft beads of light growing, fading, growing, fading. Faint shadows rose and fell on the wall. “It’s like stars breathing,” she said.

I looked at my daughter, watched her eyelids droop, saw her fingers relax. And I quietly lifted the jar and walked from the room. I couldn’t bear to leave the fireflies to die, trapped in the glass castle. I couldn’t bear to let Lindsay wake up and find the gentle creatures dead. So I unscrewed the lid and shook them free in the yard. When she woke the next morning and found the jar empty, Lindsay shrugged. “You let them go, didn’t you?” she said blithely.¹ I said, “They would have died if I hadn’t.”

Sooner or later, she found out the hard way that living things left in jars die. Maybe I should have allowed her that pang of guilt that wafts from a jar of lifeless bugs. But why? Surely life’s lessons needn’t deliberately come at such expense. And perhaps I, the parent, needed . . . oh, who knows? All I really know is that the fireflies appreciated my effort that night. For them, it must have been wonderful to tumble back into the night air, to feel the soft wind again, to light up the dance floor one more time.