I wrote this years ago to submit for a Vermont-focused writing competition. It wasn't chosen, but I was always fond of it. It made me happy when I stumbled across it recently while searching for something in my emails. I looked it over and it's still good, in my humble opinion. I decided to dust it off and share it. Hope you guys enjoy it!
“Where are we going, Daddy?”
I didn’t answer right away, waiting until I finished the turn onto I-89.
“We’re going to go visit where Mommy and Daddy used to live,” I replied. “Before we had you and Evie.”
Her brow furrowed in the rearview mirror as she chewed on the idea that there had been a time before her. We drove down the interstate, the trees receding back and rising as the mountains that flanked the road took hold of the landscape. It was a view I’d seen countless times before; a daily sight during the years we lived in Jericho. A thick mist now hung in their branches, a pleasant-looking side effect of the rains that had plagued the summer. Ominous clouds hung in the sky behind us. I hoped it wouldn’t rain again until we were done.
“Why are we going here?” Audrey asked.
It was a bigger question than she knew. I was starting new a job in a few weeks and would be out of the house more. She was starting school soon, as well. When I’d been working at home and she’d been in preschool part time, it had been easy for us to see each other and schedule excursions like this. In a few weeks, finding the time would be harder.
“We’re going to go see fireflies, kookanut.”
“Fireflies?” She asked.
“They’re these little bugs that light up and come out at night,” I explained. “When we lived up here there was this field across from our house. I went out one night and the whole field was full of fireflies. I checked with our old landlords and they said the fireflies still come out. I thought you might like it.”
“What’s a landlord?”
“They’re people you pay so you can live in a house they own.”
“Why?” she asks in reply.
“Just because,” I replied.
“Oh.”
Ten minutes passed and we came to the edge of Richmond. While we lived in Jericho, our apartment was much closer to Richmond center. Driving into the village, my mind flooded with memories. The restaurant with the mozzarella sticks my wife loved. The grocery store where I used to buy glass-bottle Cokes. The vet’s office where we had to put down our pet rat.
“I’m hungry,” Audrey said suddenly.
I was tempted to remind her of the pancakes she didn’t eat at iHop. Instead I pulled into the corner gas station. I freed Audrey from her car seat and she trotted inside, picking a juice and a bag of gummy bears. We then piled back into the car and turned left at the nearby intersection to head up toward our old home.
The sky getting darker when we arrived but it wasn’t yet night. The old farmhouse where we lived looked just as I remembered it; the wooden siding, the welcoming glow of the front windows, the branches of the tree dangling lazily over the driveway.
The field sat across the road, a massive space filled with long grass and a few houses breaking up the emptiness at its edges. I parked our car on the road near its edge. It was little after eight and, while the sun had disappeared, the sky was still light. The dark clouds from earlier were rolling closer toward us. A distant flash of white blinded us as lightning cracked across the sky.
“Daddy...” Audrey trailed off nervously.
“It’s okay, honey.” I said. “That’s really far away and if gets too close we can just go home.”
I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. Luckily, the weather seemed to be on our side. The clouds drifted away from us, saving us from having to make a disappointing escape. Audrey munched on her gummy bears, pausing every few seconds to ask me questions and sing with the radio. I answered her as
best as I could, struggling to keep up with all of the “whys” that followed my answers.
“Can I sit in your lap?” She asked, after awhile
The driver’s seat would be a tight fit for us, but I agreed any ways. Stepping outside into the humid summer air, I opened her door to unbuckle her.
“Quick Daddy!” She exclaimed with faux desperation. “The mosquitoes will eat us!”
"Quick! Quick! Quick!” I replied. Her buckles clicked open and she slipped out of her car seat. I climbed back into the driver’s seat and she settled into my lap, wrapping her arms around me in a tight embrace.
“Daddy, I’m ca-ca-ca-ca-cold.” She said with an exaggerated shiver. I highly doubted it. It was still in the seventies outside and warmer inside the car. Even so, I hugged her tightly and tried not to sneeze as her hair tickled my nose.
I glanced at our old home in the rearview mirror and my thoughts drifted to the past. My wife and I lived in that apartment for two and a half years, moving in as relative newlyweds ecstatic to finally get out of my mother-in-law’s basement. Our days there weren’t without worry. Money was an always an issue and we experienced more than a few moments of on-our-own growing pain.
We still loved it there, though. We did what we want when we wanted, even if that mostly meant staying in and snuggling on the couch. It had only been a few years since that life dissolved away in the wake of Audrey’s -and then Evelyn’s- birth.
As near to us as it was in the past, however, it felt like a completely different life. Every moment of every day was now accounted for. The quiet moments we enjoyed in the past had become rare, like nuggets of gold plucked from a rushing stream.
As my daughter yawned against my chest, however, I had no doubts that I’d gotten the better end of the trade-off. I couldn’t imagine a life without my children. Whatever luxuries we might have lost when they were born had been replaced by a love and purpose that meant more to me than anything else in my life.
Rocking Audrey to sleep as a baby. Watching her dance in her first recital. The first time I held Evelyn. The memories and all of the thousands of hugs, kisses, and “I love you’s” - I wouldn’t give them up for anything.
“I’m tired, Daddy.”
“Just a little longer,” I sighed.
It was almost nine and the sky had been dark for nearly ten minutes now. If we didn’t see fireflies soon, I knew we wouldn’t at all. It was already more than an hour past Audrey’s bed time. Her patience and stamina were dimming with each passing moment.
Just as I became sure that the night would be a bust, I saw a yellow-green flicker light up in the corner of my eye. I watched silently, my heart thumping with sudden excitement. Sure enough, another flash broke the gloom of the darkness outside. I shook Audrey, now half-asleep in my arms, rousing her gently back to wakefulness.
“What is it?” Audrey yawned.
“They’re here!”
Holding Audrey in my arms, we stepped out of the car. The solitary firefly blinked again, filling the darkness around it with soft, brief light. I could see Audrey’s eyes light up, even in the darkness.
“That’s a firefly?” It was, I told her. She started bouncing in my arms and squealed. “It’s so cute!”
A few seconds later, another one flashed, and then another. Within moments there was a small cluster of them winking in an and out sight like miniature stars. It wasn’t the awe-inspiring swarm of my memories, but Audrey didn’t seem to mind. She watched the little bugs with growing glee, her exhaustion melting away as excitement took over.
Wriggling out of my arms she danced up and down the road, pointing out each new firefly as I urged her not to go too far. I had spent hours worrying she wouldn’t like it, or that the evening would go to waste. It turned out there was no reason to worry at all.
As I buckled her back into the car twenty minutes later, she was spouting off question after question. “Tell me everything about fireflies,” she demanded.
Another twenty minutes later, she had fallen silent. We were back on the road and exhaustion had finally caught up with her.
As we pulled back up to the intersection in Richmond, I glanced at the rearview mirror where I could Audrey’s sleeping form wrapped in the glow of the traffic light. I smiled, the light turned green, and we started back toward home.
In the days to come, she would barely even mention the fireflies. It didn’t bother me though. In a way, I knew it wasn’t really for her. It was for me. So that years down the road, I could look back on that night and smile at the memory dancing in the dark as the air around us sparkled.
