Making the Music

I told you about the 17-year cicadas and showed you a picture of one. Well the common-garden variety are out singing tonight as I sit on my back porch. It is such a welcoming noise for me. You see, I grew up in East Tennessee, and when I was growing up, kids used to play outside until it was dark. (It's almost dark now.) The what I call the "common-garden variety cicadas" would muscle up their legs and make the most wonderful buzzing noise you have ever heard. It just permeated everything. Almost to the point where you didn't pay much attention to it after awhile. Particularly if you were a kid. In my grown up years, I lived in Knoxville and Bristol, Tn., and then moved to Columbia, SC, where the mosquitoes grew so big and hairy they could just about carry you away. The heat was unbearable. The first summer I moved there I thought I had moved to hell. No disrespect meant for Columbia, I loved it down there, but it was hot as hell. So needless to say I never spent much time outside. I never heard the cicadas. I don't even know if they live down there. Anyway, when I moved back to my East Tennessee community, and I bought my house, I would sit out here on the back porch (see the name of my blog). I heard the cicadas again for the first time in many years. It was a sweet, sweet sound to my ears. It took me a while to figure out what was making the music. But then I figured it out, and I've loved it ever since. Playing kick the can and hide and seek in the dark with friends was one of the fun parts of growing up -- that and Halloween. Listening to the cicadas was icing on the cake. Now it gives me comfort and reminds me that all is right with the world.