Lampyridae

To me, it was a typical college town, but to hear Tuan and Xangas reminisce, even its ordinary places take on a mythical quality. It was not my alma mater, but what impressed me was the fixed sameness of the undergraduate experience. There were the stories about greasy spoons, watering holes, professors, pranks, basketball games, hallucinogenic drugs, roommates, crushes, relationships long dispersed.



Yale was a hermetically-sealed jar of fireflies, enclosing us for a brief moment in this rarified incandescence before floating us out to the wilderness. Then, social concerns centered around the hilarity of dining hall seating, laundry room etiquette, pretentious 3 a.m. debates on the biological roots of human nature, a shitload of coffee, homemade spa treatments, and the sheer worth of innocence. Now, as attorneys, professors, surgeons, etc., they’ve taken on the weight of marriage, parenthood, alternative minimum taxes, and mortgages.

Somehow, this firefly flew straight into a tempest, emerging years later wind-blown and lost. DH asked me if this was what I wanted, what normal people want, a down payment on emotional security. Do I want a husband? Do I want children? Are we finished? What now? I wonder if this—the anger, hope, fear, strength—is simply a resurgent adolescence, recovering once more all the intensity of feeling that has since eroded over time. I'm weary of it.

What I want: to recover my faith in the exceptional life I intended to lead.