There is a snapshot image from another time and place that has time-lapsed itself into my soul. It is an image full of a hundred different things entering my senses all at once. The small town Illinois backyard at dusk at my great-grandparent's house would be heavy with summer humidity, the smell of earth, and the feel of soft grass under my feet. When it would become just dark enough, I could see the fireflies illuminating the night. Their choreographed motion was both mesmerizing and beautiful. The darker night would become, the brighter their glow. I would catch them in a mason jar and watch their light gather in an ethereal swirl of movement through the glass. They would ascend, and descend, and ascend again. After setting them free, it would soon be time to go upstairs and fall asleep to the sound of trains breaking through in the distance. I would wake up to sunlight flooding through the windows, the smell of breakfast cooking in the kitchen, and the sound of the wood floors creaking from generations of footsteps that had walked through the hallways. While the glow that filled the nights of the rest of my Generation X childhood would come mostly from video games or TV shows, I never forgot the glow of the fireflies. I never forgot those illuminated mason jars on those Midwestern summer evenings.
Sometimes, now that I am two thousand miles away and thirty something years older, that place and time will call to me and I can feel my heart swelling with some sort of longing. Sometimes a breeze blows into the house and the earth smells exactly like it did on those Illinois nights - rain in the distance falling on farmland, dust being brought down from the atmosphere back to the earth, the hallowed wood of the trees, and the soft, sweet grass. Sometimes, late at night, when an Oregon train goes wailing by in the distance, when I'm half awake, I think for a moment that I am a small child back in Illinois.
If you are Generation X, you were born into one of the most neglected generations in modern history. Thankfully, this doesn't apply to every family, as there are Gen Xers who were well loved in their growing up years - yet while I know Xers who had good childhoods, I know many more who did not. The logic of the times included parental self-immersion which led to, and even required, self-reliance for Xers. The years that Generation X grew up have even been called the most anti-child era in the history of America - and this left Gen X with a pretty hardened edge. The zeitgeist took a wrenching toll on me, and although my childhood was wrought with the same darkness and chaos as most Gen Xers, it was also full of many blessings and good moments that I cling to. Through all my growing-up years, the most meaningful thing of all was a steadfast undertow of light - enough that the darkness could never completely overtake me.
I remember the Illinois dusk. The heavy, tired dusk in those days would hang over the streets, and the houses, and our hearts, foreshadowing a darkness sure to manifest in the coming years and decades. My Great Grandparents' small town had seen a pandemic, and the Great Depression, and poverty, and wars, and the way factory workers have to struggle to feed their families. And history is known to repeat itself. Yet, right in the midst of the enveloping anxiety that came as the sun would slip down below the horizon, a profound peace would emerge. A message would resonate within me, telling me not to be afraid when the dusk comes, and not to be afraid when dusk turns to night,
because morning always follows.
I remember the sacred evenings - the sound of the screen door as it tapped against its metal frame, the dusk slowly growing darker. The fireflies would illuminate the glass jar sitting on a red and white checkered tablecloth on a wood table in my Great Grandparent's backyard to mark time, and place, and the meaning of a life and a family. On those summer nights when I would catch the fireflies, I would only keep them in the jar a short time - I wanted most of all to watch them fly again toward the treetops when my Great Grandfather would call out, "Now set them free!"
If there was a message that Generation X needed to be told in their childhoods, a message we can send back in time to our child-hearts all those years ago, it is this:
Do not be afraid, because, soon enough, you'll be free.
If there is a message that Generation X needs to be completely conscious of through the struggles of adulthood, it is this:
Do not be afraid, because the light always ascends.
Do not be afraid, because the dawn always follows the night.
If there is a message our Great Grandparents, also from a lost generation, would want to send, it is this:
We still have messages for you, come search for them at dusk, and search again at dawn.
As the years went on, when dusk would grow darker and the dark of night would follow, the memory of those glass jars was enough light to sustain me....
Through the darkest of nights, I was given enough light to carry me, and that light was the substance of God.
Those fleeting moments of unbounded peace and joy stayed imprinted on my consciousness throughout my life - when the fireflies would fly upward, when their light would ascend. While we know that the dusk always leads to night, even the darkest night finally leads once again to the day.
Fireflies at Dusk.
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(c) 2012 images and writing by Chloe Koffas - all rights reserved
