Dancing Fireflies

It is only the second week in June and the weather has already changed from persistent daily rain to ninety-degree heat. Marilyn and I took my dad to dinner tonight and when we returned home I fed the cats and dogs. Afterwards I sat on the front porch, trying to coax my kitty cat Rouge to join me as I watched the flashing display of lightning bugs in the neighbor’s yard.

I called my kitty to join me but Rouge was having none of it, wary that I might try to thin her winter matted hair with my pocket knife. She knows me too well! As I sat there, trying to remain as still as possible because of the uncomfortable heat, I thought about my dad.

I had put a phone in his room with two speed dial buttons covered with yellow sticky notes with my name and my brother’s name. If I don’t call him, he calls me every night.

“I’m about to starve to death,” he tells me. “There’s nobody here. I’ve been alone all day.”

I don’t bother mentioning that I had talked to him an hour earlier, just as he had finished dinner. Tonight Mar and I took him to Bennigan’s, just down the street from his assisted living home. He wanted a hamburger and fries. When the waiter brought them he picked at them both.

“Golly,” he said. “I don’t know where I’m going to put all this.”

My dad is from Louisiana and like most people from that superb state he has never met a person he didn’t like. Yes I know, but I think Will Rogers was really born there instead of here in Oklahoma. The old man seems okay to see us, although he has a sad look of resignation on his face.

Dad’s fingernails are long, clean, and perfectly shaped. When I comment on them, he pulls his knife from his pocket and shows it to me. He also shows me his new good luck charm, a flat piece of silver metal.

“I found it outside in the garden. I don’t know what it is.”

The metal was polished and had no writing on either side. “Looks like a digital battery,” I said. “For the life of me I don’t know how it got so shiny.”

Dad stuck it back in his pocket.

“It’s getting kind of late. Hope someone knows where I’m at.”

“We’re on our way back,” I said, clearing our tab and returning to the car for the return trip to Brighton Gardens.”

Back on the front porch, my thoughts returned to my cat Rouge. I tried once more to coax her into leaving her cool resting spot in the flower bed. She wasn’t budging. Wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand I thought about the approaching summer. I also thought about the summers past, and the winters. Where had time gone? Am I the same person I was as a child, also sitting on a front porch somewhere in Louisiana, trying to coax a cat to join me?

As the neighbor’s fireflies continued their nightly dance I dragged myself off the concrete and retreated inside to the awaiting coolness, realizing I don’t have a clue.
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