I Know Where the Fireflies Have Gone by A.C. Francis

I Know Where the Fireflies Have Gone

by A.C. Francis

My grandparents’ property included a house in which they raised their sixteen children and a barn from which my grandfather ran his catering business. They had a pool installed when I was six and owned a couple of golfcarts that became my mode of transportation to take me through my childhood. A lot of my childhood memories take place there, with my family. In them, I’m playing baseball in the front yard with my brothers and cousins. I’m playing hide and seek with my aunts, who were essentially my older sisters, seeing as they were only a few years older than me. I’m getting yelled at by someone for jumping too high on the trampoline, for running along the pool deck, for driving the golfcart too fast.

I’m never alone, though, in these memories. It seemed as if we all lived together at times. My cousins and I would stay over on weekends, during the Christmas holidays, and throughout the summer. Aunts and uncles would move in and move out, bobbing along with the unpredictable flow of life as they navigated through marriages, divorces, moves, and necessary escapes. They seemed to replace each other in the house as easily as commuters in a seat on the morning train.

My grandfather’s house seemed to exist inside a bubble, away and separate from the outside world. It erased most of the day’s worries and fears. Family, friends, and even clients would stop by, pop into the kitchen for a fresh capicola and provolone sandwich, and listen to my grandfather talk until their troubles flew out the window, far, far away. They’d seek solace from their daily stresses. They’d vent about their husband, wife, boyfriend, or girlfriend. About school or their job. The anxieties and fears us kids felt were different than what our aunts and uncles and other grown-ups would experience. We were afraid of the dark, nervous about our Little League game, and dreaded the end of Christmas break when the radio stations would go back to playing normal music. A child’s fears and worries aren’t less important than an adult’s, though. And at Grammy’s and Pop Pop’s, they were driven from our minds. Power outages weren’t inconvenient or scary — they were an excuse to make a fort with blankets that smelled like lilac. An opportunity to listen to our grandmother tell ghost stories as we huddled together with flashlights that illuminated her warm smile. Thunderstorms that rattled the windows weren’t as threatening as they were at friends’ houses or school. Pop Pop was driving the golfcart we left in the yard back into the shed for us. He wasn’t afraid of the rain or the thunder or the lightning, and so we weren’t afraid.

Once we pulled into Grammy and Pop Pop’s, we were safe. We were with family. We were going to have fun. My grandfather created an atmosphere you didn’t want to leave. Going home at the end of the night felt like the last few hours of summer break, when the reality of tomorrow made its presence known with an aggressive reminder of early mornings, long bus rides, miserable teachers, and hours of homework. The sky seemed to dim after pulling out of their driveway. The reds and pinks and yellows and blues that would wink at us from above while we played in his yard were choked out by misty grays and pale whites after only going a half mile down the road.

For me, my grandfather was the reason that property shined the way it did. He’d watch over us quietly, blanketing us in security that felt impenetrable. There’d be times we wouldn’t see him for hours, as his unrivaled work ethic was the reason for his business’ success. But his presence was always felt. We’d see the back of his head through his office window, phone in hand while taking notes with the other. We didn’t know what he was saying exactly, but we knew the foundation of every conversation.  “Hello, Antonelli’s,” he’d sing to them in a booming, musical voice, soothing their every worry and granting their every wish like a genie from a bottle.

I was their first grandchild, something I’ve come to appreciate increasingly as I’ve aged. I’m able to remember him in the prime of his life. I was able to have catches with him, have serious conversations with him, laugh at his stories, see him run and slide in the yard after my parents bought him custom baseball cleats to fit his infamously wide feet. My siblings and cousins, us older grandchildren, were able to receive his grandfatherly love fresh out of the box. Unfamiliar, unrehearsed, with natural instincts. We were like an opening night audience of a new play, the lucky ones able to see him perform as this character for the first time. We’d be able to say we saw him first, decades later when the production is known as a masterpiece.

He swam in the pool with us, took us on golfcart rides, made us breakfasts and lunches and dinners that still tease my tastebuds with yearning when I think about them. I worked with him, ran errands with him, was lectured by him, shook along with the floor as he let out his contagious, thundering laugh. He helped my dad coach one of my baseball teams and I got to share a dugout with him. I knew that one was special even at the time.  I remember my uncles telling me and my cousins we got the best version of him. I never doubted them.

I spent most of my summer nights there, playing manhunt in the fields that surrounded the property with my siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. We’d hide in the shadows behind trees, in between bushes, inside barns and sheds. We’d laugh when were caught, chase each other through the grass, running at full speed through the fireflies like a rocket zipping through an expansive highway of stars. We would wake up, eat breakfast, burst out the door, and spend the day swimming, running, eating, playing, laughing, and riding golfcarts.

My first taste of true freedom was on those golfcarts, driving through the opening of the gate on the south end of the property and seeing nothing but open fields in front of me. It’s funny to think about now. I’d scream or start to sing, thinking that the roar of the tiny engine was masking my high-pitched yelps and squeals. I remember sitting on a chair on the lawn with my brother years later, craning my neck towards that field, hearing everything my younger cousins were yelling in delight while they rode away into those same fields.  “Oh my God, you can hear everything they’re saying,” I said to my brother as we laughed, remembering the things we’d scream to each other so we could hear ourselves over the growling engine.

The property itself provided us with a childhood nobody I know could even comprehend. I’d bring my friends over and couldn’t understand their awe at the place. Doesn’t everybody’s grandfather have patented trolleys that have walkthrough buffets inside them? My brother and I would sneak onto those trolleys on sultry summer days, and we’d take a couple of sodas that laid chilled in the ice tubs. We’d drive shirtless down into the fields as the humid air would collect dust thrown up from the tires and glue it to our sticky arms and chests. After finishing a bottle of root beer or orange cream soda, we’d park along the edge of the woods and throw the glass bottles as far into the leafy darkness as we could. We’d wait in anticipated silence until we heard them shatter against the rocks embedded in the unseen tufts of tall grass, hollering in satisfaction as the whispers of chilled glass bounced off the trees and reverberated back to us.

Honey-colored visions of my childhood have not yet soured. They remain in my mind as clear as anything I see today. I know time will continue to change the place, though. My grandfather passed away 11 years ago and already; the property has evolved with its new owners and inhabitants. The pine trees that used to line the driveway have been cut down. The dirt paths that used to line the edges of the property have been filled in with sod. The above-ground pool has had two different liners installed since he’s passed and is now surrounded by a prim collection of small trees, shrubs, and flowers that are anything but wild. The old deck, with its rusty nails and splintered boards that my cousins and I painted red the summer before he died, has been replaced with a concrete slab. The lawn is manicured, too nice and expensive to be trodden upon by a golfcart filled with noisy children. The fields beyond the property have been sold to developers who have built houses where my brothers, cousins, and I would tell each other secrets under the perceived guise of what we thought was a loud engine. Our laughs and songs and shouts and screams no longer fill the night sky. They exist now only in the memories of those who choose to cherish them.

My grandfather’s property felt like a sanctuary to me — as if it was built upon holy land. He created that feeling. Not with the golfcarts or the pool or the toys he’d buy us. By simply being there for us, for being a constant presence in our lives. After working 10-12 hours, he made time for us. He’d clean the kitchen and then take us on relaxing golfcart rides, where we’d bundle up in blankets and sweatshirts and rest our heads upon his Popeye-like biceps. I still remember the sensation the hair on his arms made against the side of my face, like wisps of dandelions that tickled my ears as each strand danced in the wind of the ride. He’d park in the back shed, turn off the lights, and then walk us into the kitchen, where he’d give us ice cream and make sundaes or root beer floats. The Phillies games would be playing in the background on a radio, the announcers’ lulling voices acting mostly as white noise until we’d hear their inflections rise in the excitement of a towering home run hit by one of the good guys.

Imagining life as an adult is impossible as a child. You assume you’ll be a kid forever. Work is something your father and your grandfather and your uncles do and always have done. It’s not for you and never will be. Your days as far as you can imagine are filled with ice cream, baseball, pools, golfcarts, and open fields. And then one day, you find yourself working weekends. Your summer is no longer for bare feet, night swimming, and games of tag that outrun the sun. You find the opposite sex appealing and want to go to movie theaters with them and buy them candy. You need money to do that, so the golfcarts and the pool are put on hold. Only for a little while, you tell yourself.

Suddenly you’re thirty-seven, you have a house, a dog, a wife, two kids, and your grandparents are no longer here. They’re ghosts that live in your mind, dance in home video tapes, and display frozen smiles in photos. You sometimes forget what color eyes they had. Grammy’s were blue and Pop Pop’s were brown, right? Or were his green? No, they were brown. I think. You see a picture of your grandfather at the same age you are now. He looks strong and happy, but his hair’s thinning just like yours, and that shared physical flaw reconnects you to him for a moment. You feel his bone-shattering handshake before he pulls you into his large chest for a hug that takes your breath away. Your face is pressed against his white T-shirt or his greasy maroon apron or his ironed button-down, and that intoxicating aroma of Old Spice deodorant mixed with homemade meatballs makes its way up your nose, pokes its way into your brain, and brings him back to you. His laugh is real and mighty and true. His eyes glisten as they watch you. He’s flesh and blood, and he’s standing there with you.

I drive by the place occasionally. I take my rides in a car now instead of a golfcart. A few nights ago, I parked on the side of the road at the north entrance of the property. I turned my radio off and listened to the night purr its way to sleep. Cicadas and frogs harmonized somewhere in the distance. I don’t see fireflies as much as I used to as a kid. I don’t know if that’s because there’s fewer of them or because I simply notice them less. Maybe they’re still there in the same number, but exist in the background, through the haze of mortgage payments, children, and jobs. But I noticed them in my grandfather’s yard that night, speaking to each other in their mystical code of sparkling, intermittent flashes of light. Maybe there seems to be fewer of them because my grandfather took some with him, to be his beacon of light that guide him between his new home and back when he feels the need to check on all of us. I saw the fireflies float through my grandfather’s property, and something told me it was true, that he’d kept some for himself and brought them back, to wait for him in the yard like a cowboy who hitches his horse to a post after a long journey. And while the fireflies dutifully waited for him in the yard, I knew he must have been making his rounds. That he must have been turning the lights off in the back shed, locking up the kitchen, and tidying up his office for the night, before making his way over to the house. I knew that he must have been peeking his head into every bedroom, shining his flashlight into sleeping faces, making sure we’re there and that we’re safe. From the street I caught a glimpse of his flashlight bouncing up and down through the windows. Performing his duty as the sentinel of safety, ensuring that feeling of security he created still lives on. I heard the screen door creak open and shut, and his footsteps crunch along the stone path. I saw the moonlight reflect off the top of his head, and I knew that he’d done his job and could return home. I didn’t have to say anything to him. Feeling his presence was enough, just as it always had been.