A friend of mine and I were reminiscing about growing up. He shared with me his single most vivid memory of his dad. You might think it would be some well-planned vacation or some expensive, extravagant gift. But, it wasn’t. You see my friend’s father was on the road a lot, a busy important man — things to do, people to see.
Well, one evening this father and his 8 or 9 year old son were driving. My friend could not recall the destination, but he knew it was business related because “Dad had on his three-piece suit.”
On a quiet stretch of two-lane highway, all of a sudden this dad pulls off the road. It wasn’t an emergency-type stop. But my friend recalled that he was frightened for just a moment. The entire situation reflected the urgency of a flat tire, but there had been no galumphing sounds or shaky steering. Within seconds, this dad hopped out of the car, rolled up his shirtsleeves, loosened his necktie, and opened the trunk.
He didn’t pull out the tire iron or a suitcase. Instead, he came around to the side of the car, tapped on the passenger window, and held up an empty glass jar. The dad motioned for his son to follow him and then — wingtips and all — he ran into the field…to catch fireflies. Lightning bugs.
The field was full of them and the hovering, dancing, flashing creatures blended into the clear starry sky. All told, that father and son weren’t in that field very long at all. With their bare hands they caught scores of the bugs, letting most of them go. The dad poked some holes in the lid of jar, the boy tossed in some grass because that’s what you do, and he carried the jar back to the car like a trophy. The entire episode lasted less than ten minutes.
Now, we can never be sure what motivated that father at that moment to create the stuff of which memories are made, but we can speculate. Maybe the sight of those flashing insects just off the road triggered memories of his own youth. Maybe he’d been carrying that jar around for months for just that purpose. Maybe, some heavenly-inspired paternal instinct kicked in.
Whatever it was, the lesson is clear: Dad, pull over to catch the fireflies.
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