Cicadas Live More Than Once In A Year
“Flint & Steel Full Circle Writing Challenge”
This is the story of a prompt that made me think about actual life and also moved memories to come back to me.
It all started with the sound of cicadas.
Comforting and summer-related, pleasant sometimes. Unpleasant and invasive when repeated intensely by thousands of them for hours and hours.
Talking about their aspect, I have to confess to you they’re not the best good-looking insects, nor the worst, at least this is their effect on me.
What about my cats? They adore catching and eating cicadas. How terrible, I know! Naughty, naughty girls! The show they are offering to me in summer is pitiful.
Apart from it, I didn’t give much importance to these little animals until a memory popped up. A memory of a summer spent in a tent camping in Tuscany in my mid-twenties. My head is spinning as I remember the noise.
I couldn’t sleep. I hated them. I just wanted to relax and their noise was annoying me too much. I begged my friends to change the place and go somewhere else. Sorry for you, darling. It’s summertime and it’s all booked.
I had to go through intense auto training to relax and avoid focusing on the singing. The training was successful, after a couple of days. I made peace with the environment in the end, and the cicadas became just one of the many particularities of the place. They were integrated into my camping experience, or, the other way round, I became a conscious part of their territory.
The funny thing? This memory led to another one I was secretly keeping aside, closed down into the childhood section.
Cicadas were very characteristic of the summer in the countryside where I used to spend some time with my family at my grandmother’s home. She lived three to four hours from our house and I loved being there for the freedom of the context. It allowed me and my sisters to joyfully spend our holidays in plein air.
Often at night time, we were out playing. To invite us to stop and go to bed, my parents asked us to become silent and listen to the noises of the cicadas. They wanted us to calm down, take a breath and relax before going to sleep. Nice tactic? I don’t know.
I still have the sweetest memories related to the presence of cicadas in the background of those summers and the pleasant time spent with my family. You are significant beings, cicadas. I love you!
Now, any time one of my cats will bring me “heroically” one of their cicadas preys, it won’t be the same.
