The lightning bugs hovered thick and close to the lower limbs of the maple tree. They live up to their name here under these low and leafy branches; their light rolling in waves throughout the mist of insects like the electricity through a summer thundercloud. A thundercloud much like that above me now which threatens to pour down and scatter these fire flies.
How did I find myself here in my parent’s front yard again, this the eve of my 25th birthday?
Ten years ago, at fifteen, I had found myself just crawling out of this maple tree. It had been my favorite place to spend time in the fall afternoons after school. Of course, I had no nostalgia or otherwise weighty meaning to these afternoons. It was me merely burning time, which, it would seem I had always had plenty.
If I were not to be found in that tree, I was more than likely in one of two other places. If it were late night, I would be found in front of my computer, typing away at some horrible piece of fiction, or some computer program. Both were creative outlets for me. Now, the fiction fills up my web page and gives me some venue for expressing my feelings, the computer programming has become my career. Neither is me.
If it were late evening, or maybe even the early parts of night, I might be found with shovel and buckets at the creek. I would dig large trenches and short but stout walls to create a large watering hole. I would repair the damages of last night’s rain, or the engineering of crawdads and salamanders. The summer I turned 15 was the last summer I dug in the creek.
There are few large droplets of water now on my windshield, but the fireflies still dance and hover beneath the shelter of the tree. The sky is a dark gray that hangs very thick and close to the horizon. The leaves of the trees have become limp and turned their undersides to this July storm, the resulting silvery green color providing a surreal foil to the silver gray of the sky. The photographer is teasing us.
High school swept down on me very quickly. With the rancor of the larger school, I grew optimistic that I would find myself out of my shell to which I somehow had retreated. Even at 14 and 15 I was so conscious of ‘I’, more conscious than my friends who lived in this groupthink world that I so desperately wished to join which somehow I was prohibited to enter because I was ‘I’ instead of ‘We’.
The last year of high school and my college experience only emphasized and cemented my consciousness and in the end, allowed me to more openly express myself with pride for everything I was.
And I was not the boy that sat in the tree that summer ten years ago.
When I was coming out, I often assured my parents, as some way of getting them over the shock of my being gay, that I was still the same person they knew two days ago, two months ago, two years ago. And in some strange continual reality, I was. Yet, now looking back those four years, nearly to the day, that I broke the news to my parents, the claim has a hollow ring to it.
I was, in fact, not the person they knew two days, two months, or two years before. And for the simplest of reasons… that person had grown and changed and evolved. And at that critical stage in life, two days were as rich as unstable as two years in an adult life. Was it not, in fact, in the space of two hours conversation with myself my final year of high school, that I came to grips with the knowledge of my sexuality? Was it not within the span of a 20-minute conversation that I had chosen the school I would attend for college? Two weeks debate was all that was necessary to decide my major; and two-seconds for me to change it one semester later.
At 21, I was three years beyond these tremendous decisions on the future of my life. And at 21, I was not changing as rapidly and as furtively as I had at 18. And the disclosure I made that day, that birthday, was not reached in two seconds during the phone call in which it slipped. And I was nearly the same person as I was two days ago, as I recall, my memory failing me even at 25, I only grew stronger, more optimistic, and more understanding of these elements of my character. I grew less ashamed.
And that leaves me here in my car at the brink of a summer storm the eve of my 25th birthday. The four years between these days has been filled to overflowing with experiences that continue to shape and define me. A failed long-term relationship, a blossoming career, friends from which I can pull strength and pride. The past two years alone have thrown me into a whirlwind of change which has left me breathless, all the more unsure of the answer to the question, "Who am I?"
But the consciousness of "I" seems so less important now. While not quite relegated to the same musty corners as the lingering memories from my past of the swarms of fireflies I would race through on summer evenings to catch in old glass jars and show proudly to my parents. Or the evenings watching the thunderstorms from the back seat of my parents’ car. Or the afternoons and weekends growing muddy in the creek bed. Or the long nights in college where I found myself alone wandering campus. It has stepped aside for an acceptance of ‘I’. And like the up turned leaves of the maple tree against the silver gray or the thundercloud. Or the sparkle of the lightning bugs in the dimness of the coming storm. The contrast allows me to appreciate the change.
I hurry myself from my car and into my parents’ home before the pouring rain would drench me.