by Wendy V. Smith (January 2011, edited July 2, 2020)
Wayne and I shared one bedroom on the second floor of our old farm house. The bedroom window looked east, out through a large fragrant lilac tree over a very large glorious crab apple tree, to an immense vegetable garden, and beyond that one could see a row of very tall spruce trees that my grandfather planted as a wind break. This is one of my memories…
“Time for bed kids. Off ya go,” called Mom
“But its still light outside, Ma,” I whined. “How can we go to sleep when its light outside?”
“You have school tomorrow and its eight o’clock. You won’t see light with your eyes closed.”
Unhappily, Wayne and I made our way up the creaky stairs and down the creepy hallway.
We slept in bunk beds. Wayne slept on the bottom and I slept on the top. Holding the mattresses in place were flat thin strips of metal with springs on each end. While lying down, Wayne could stretch his legs up and place feet flat against the bump what was my bum sinking down into the top mattress. With one big kick, Wayne would send me flying up into the air. In fact, once I went so high that my nose nearly touched the slanted ceiling.
“Do it again!” I would beg. One time, Wayne gave the biggest kick he could, but his feet slipped to one side of my bum and I went flying out of the top bunk, sailing through the air and onto the floor. BANG!
“Thump, thump, thump, thump!” we could hear Mom coming up the stairs.
“Oh no,” Wayne whispered, “Hurry up, get back into bed and close your eyes. Ma’s coming.”
“OK you kids,” Mom said, standing at the door, hands on her hips. “What’s going on up here?”
Silence.
“WAYNE!” Mom demanded.
Wayne sleepily raised his head. “What’s the matter Ma? You woke me up.”
“Don’t give me that! What was that bang?”
“Bang? What bang?” Wayne said innocently.
“On more word or noise from up here and I’ll send Dad up here. Now GET TO SLEEP!”
Mom left the room and headed back down the stairs.
I looked out the window and saw the most beautiful site I had ever seen. The yard was filled with tiny little lights, floating everywhere.
“Oh my god, look outside!”
Wayne jumped out of bed and stared out the window. “Fireflies!” he whispered.
“Fireflies? What are they?”
“Fireflies are bugs that light up at night,” Wayne said as he pushed the window all the way open and placed a piece of wood under it to hold it in place. He grabbed a small glass jar from his desk that had been the temporary home of a caterpillar and was making his way through the second story window.
“Where are you going? You’ll break your neck and Ma will be so mad.”
“Stay here and be quiet. I’ll be right back.” Wayne disappeared down the lilac tree. The moon was bright and I could see Wayne and Buster running around the back yard. Within 5 minutes, Wayne was back up the lilac tree and crawling in the bedroom window. He took the stick out and pushed the window down to close it tight then tip toed to the door and shut it. He fished the jar out of this pyjama pocket and opened the lid to release a swarm of fireflies into the bedroom.
I truly felt like I was Wendy from Peter Pan. It was magic. There were Tinkerbells flying everywhere.
“WOW!” she whispered.
“Watch,” Wayne whispered as he caught a fly and smushed it all over his cheek.
“Eeeeooo,” I cringed. But that look soon turned to complete amazement as i saw Wayne’s cheek glowing in the dark. “Oh my god!”
“Here – try it!” Wayne caught a fly and handed it to me.
“No way! I’m not smashing bugs on my face! YOU do it again.”
It was quite a while before we crawled back into our beds and fell asleep.
“Lloyd, you need to have a look at the window in the kids room,” Mom said to Dad the next morning at breakfast. “There must be hole somewhere.”
Our blurry eyes popped open wide as we looked at each other.
“Oh?” Dad took a sip of his coffee.
“The room is filled with flies and its the only place I can think of where they might be coming from,” Mom said sitting down.
“Oh?” Dad said again looking at Wayne who sat frozen. “What kind of flies?”
My eyes darted back and forth between Mom and Dad.
“Fireflies, looks like,” said Mom.
“I’ll have a look,” said Dad. The children were unusually silent. “Looks like something got into the lilac tree outside the kids room last night.”
“Oh?” said Mom.
“Some branches were freshly broken off, like something was trying to climb up or down it,” said Dad looking at Wayne again.
Wayne looked at the clock. “Come on. We gotta go. The school bus will be here any minute.”
And with that, we grabbed their filled lunch boxes and ran out the door.