Tuesday, August 16, 2011

cicadas and home

After hours of cornfields and soybeans, rippling grasses and R.V.s pulling motorcycles and SUVs; after several chapters of Sterling North's Rascal and one viewing of Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro;  after wishing for the umpteenth time that Indiana was just somewhere else (my apologies to those of you who live in and enjoy Indiana; it has always existed for me as an obstacle between here and there); after Applebees and a hotel pool all to ourselves (delicious) and a good night's sleep in a king-size bed with my wee one....Ani and I are home!!  We are home to happy cats and flowers on the scarlet runner beans and thunderstorms and a volunteer pumpkin plant that has taken over the front steps. We are Happy to be Home.  The bittersweet to our return is that we left Dan and Eliza in Wisconsin, to attend a family wedding at the end of the week.  Two weeks was just plenty of Away for me and for Anika, so we came on home. 
I am missing Eliza and looking forward to sharing more solid ground with her when she returns.  Our visits with family give us very little face-time together, and we both feel the disconnect by the end of our time away from home.  I was very pleased, therefore, to return  one night past bedtime, after hours spent with my sister, to find a bowl of what at first appeared to be some kind of crunchy snack on the table, which turned out to be the handiwork of my daughter: 30 cicada molts.  It was like a little love note to me!  Apparently she brought them home - after watching a cicada emerge from one of them! - attached to her shirt. My sister was not quite as happy as I was to find them on her table, so after photographing them, the girls and I took them back across the street to the trees they first clung to...
I love you Eliza!!!

2 comments:

merry said...

Yup, I almost helped myself to a snack ---- and then jumped back in horror as I saw what I was about to put in my mouth!!! Tricksters!!

Stephanie said...

:)
Yup.
Lovenotes like bones an' feathers.