Vol. 97 - Cicadas

On lifecycles.

Cicadas are everywhere.

The remnants of their little exoskeleton carcasses dot seemingly every inch of the exterior of our homes as the tiny creatures with their brilliant little red-orange eyes crawl slowly from place to place. Their eerie song fills the air all over town with a constant mid-range hum that makes it sound like one of the faucets on the other side of your home is running.

These little creatures burrow their way into the ground, where they stay for 13 or 17 years, depending on the brood (what’s making this year extra crazy is that both broods are on the same cycle), only to come out, mate, and die.

They’ve taken over and a lot of people are grossed out by them.

But I find them fascinating, using their lives as a time and a chance to frame my own.

The last time the cicadas emerged, I had just met Emily. I didn’t know her that well, but felt that I was onto something special. I never imagined I’d leave New York and, if I was thinking about kids, probably wasn’t thinking about them with Emily. At least not in terms that were anything more than abstract. Four years later, we’d leave New York. A year after that, we were married. Two years after that, we welcomed our son to the world.

That night, he was born during the opening ceremonies of the 2018 Winter Olympics. And in our first morning as a family of three, I imagined his life in four-year increments.

Suddenly, in my mind, this brand new creature was four-years-old and I was explaining what exactly a luge is as we sip hot chocolate under our fuzzy Mets blanket.

Then, he was eight and had been to a few mountains, ski trips with mom and dad. He took some lumps and got back up, ready to tame the wild hill. He learned how to fall, how to take a mouthful of snow without giving up. He learned resilience.

He was twelve and skating circles on the ice around his creaky old man. I insist on telling him stories of the pond hockey I used to play on Otis Bog Road when I was his age, but he doesn’t care. He just smiles and nods at the story I’ve told him a thousand times before.

He was sixteen and he’s hitting the massive halfpipe, much to his nervous parents’ dismay. His confidence is higher than it will ever be. He is invincible.

He is twenty. He’s a man now and are starting to create his own life. Maybe he’s off at college. Maybe he’s across the street at UNC. But we’ll talk on the phone while the Olympics play on the television and I’ll remind him once again about the night he made us a family. And he'll smile and nod as the story I’ve told him a thousand times before.

With our daughter, there wasn’t much fanfare surrounding her birth. She arrived in late summer, hardly prime time for any external benchmark by which to measure a life.

But now, she’s two. And I think of the cicadas and what my little girl’s life might look like the next time we tiptoe around the little insects.

She’ll be fifteen when the 13-year brood comes back around, probably a junior in high school. We’ll be starting to look at colleges then, preparing her to send her off on her own. She might know a bit of college life, as she’s gone to visit her big brother at his school, wherever that may be. I hope they still hang out in thirteen years, hope they’re still as enamored with each other as they are today.

Even further, I think of the other brood of cicadas, of what my life as a father might look like in seventeen years. Our son will be a man then, twenty-three-years-old. Where in the world he might land, there’s no way to know. I just hope it’s not here. But I won’t tell him that, because maybe staying close to home is what will make him happy. But the world is big and fantastic and I want him to explore it. Anyway, it’s unlikely Emily and I will be here once the nest is empty. After all, the world is big and fantastic and we still have so much more to explore. But maybe we’ll still be here. After all, our daughter will be nineteen, perhaps still in college, and we want her to know home until she’s ready to be off in the world, fully, independently, and wholly a woman on her own.

Maybe it’ll look entirely different from anything I can imagine at this moment. After all, being a 41-year-old father of two, living in North Carolina, and making a living as a writer was not at all what I thought my life would look like the last time the cicadas emerged.

Whatever those years look like, I hope I won’t be like the cicada, with my head dug in the ground only to look up in thirteen or seventeen years wondering what the fuck just happened.