The main thing about cicadas is that when I moved here, when everything was overgrown and the driveway was unpaved and the house was painted a horrible stone blue, these cicadas were my companions at night. I sat on my bed for hours just thinking, as they accompanied me, as if my thoughts were the soloist and they were backup vocals. Oh, those beautiful summer days, although I was alone most of the time... although I had no friends in school, and needless to say no friends at home... the cicadas were there. I could always count on them to sing for me. Unlike myself. I could never count on myself to sing for someone else at any given point in time.
I count the days until the summer, and the first day of summer (in my mind) is the first day those cicadas start crying. Just as the first day of spring is the first day the cherry trees blossom. (Did I tell you I also quite like cherry blossoms? I shall describe later.)
Hearing them now, it takes me back to those days, maybe in... third grade? June fifth. That day was the day we arrived, and that night was the first night I ever heard the cry of a cicada. That night itself I may have forgotten, but the cry I will not.
With that sound that many others told me they do not enjoy, comes a certain hope. A new beginning. There comes a light, a feeling that I can turn myself around if anything bothers me about myself, if I feel that one thing or another is wrong. This cry is connected to my third-grade heart on that night, the night I first moved to America and started over with a clean slate. This cry is connected to me forever.
And every summer, every night that I hear the embodiment of my remembrances crying at my window, I stand up and I walk over and I salute those unknowing insects.
They are amazing things, cicadas.
~Sara
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