Katydid, then Didn’t

Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.

from "It Was Early", Evidence, by Mary Oliver

When our lake house was first built, over 30 years ago now, it was the only house in acres of woodland. No street lights, or houses close by. When evening came, it got dark, and I mean DARK.It was very beautiful, but also very elemental. The animals were curious and the insects overwhelming. Spring was announced by the steady belling of the tree frogs joined by a chorus of crickets when summer officially arrived. Neither sound held a candle compared to the noise made beginning in July when the katydids took over. You could not sit outside and carry on a conversation because their rustic, sawing call drowned everything else out. The noise was deafening.

Now, while none of these sounds are as loud, they are still rich and vocal. More homes have been built near to us, civilization has arrived. Still on a sultry summer evening there is lots of noisy calling from the woods. It brings back so many memories of growing up. Back then (you know, 'the olden days') air conditioning was pretty much unheard of in the South, even in the city. Folks had attic fans and sleeping porches when things got really hot. After baths, we would climb into bed lulled by the whirring noise of the fan pulling the moist dark air in from outside. Even if it wasn't really much cooler, it always felt that way moving across our bodies in the dark. I remember visiting my Grandmother who lived in the country. That house did not have an attic fan, so we would lie in bed listening to the whip, whip, whip, of the hand fan she used to work up a breeze that would lull us into sleep and make us finally give up scratching all our mosquito bites. In both those memories I recall the sensation of partially waking up deep in the night and realizing the earth had cooled down. Night had truly settled in and it wasn't so hot. That's when you rolled over, pulled the sheet up and went back to sleep, deliciously cool.

As much as I dislike some of the Hollywood versions of Southerners—the terrible imitations of our accent, the shallow stereotypes they use over and over, they did get one thing right: the sweating. When the heat set in, clothes would stick to your back, handkerchiefs became a necessity to wipe your face and life was fueled by endless glasses of iced tea. Nothing was air conditioned: not offices, not churches or stores or even funeral homes. Think about that. We fanned. A card board fan from the local funeral parlor with the scene of "Jesus in the Garden" being the most universal way to achieve this. What happened to all those fans? They were everywhere, remember?

Those days are over of course. Air conditioning is considered a requirement now and is everywhere. People even have personal misting fans that are battery operated. I could have used one of those the summer it was 103 degrees and I was 7 months pregnant. There is no 'sweating', only 'perspiring'. Folks wouldn't know what a sleeping porch looked like if they had one. They're called 'outdoor rooms'. Isn't that something to think about? We had so much fun on the sleeping porch. It was the same as camping out only without the mosquitoes biting and waking up with dew all over you. Besides, you could eavesdrop on the grownups conversations. I learned a lot about things that way. But as wonderful as air conditioning is, and as much as I dearly love it, it moved us another step away from the outside. Between it and the TV, we have all pretty much abandoned our front porches and insulated ourselves from the summer evenings. No more fighting over the hanging swing or just rocking listening to the katydids. I don't remember much conversation. The time was more about settling down from supper and the day.

On reflection that is the part I miss the most--the settling down. The value of idle time is a lost tradition. Rather than soften our gaze out across the yard, we let it wander through the channels on the remote and skip the chance to be still and quiet, maybe even get a bit of perspective on the day or just rest from the effort of it. There's a comely phrase if I do say so myself: 'rest from the effort of it'. When I hear the katydids each year, that's what their song calls out to me. It's about the value of old ways that were somehow misplaced in the upgrade. Did you know the sky isn't really black at night? Often times it is a very deep azure blue and can have white clouds brighter than they are in the daytime. Did you know that flowers smell more intensely at dusk? or that the dew forms just when the ground cools below the air temperature and that's the best time to play chase because you can slide on the grass? Did you know that some moths are as big as a small bird and that chimney swifts sing their babies to sleep in the chimneys and fan them with their wings? Does it matter whether we know this or not? I think it does. These kinds of things add to our life experience, they don't subtract. They awaken an aliveness in us that is restorative and nurturing. They reorient us to being a part of the world instead of a visitor living in it. Life is meant to change and memories are often subject to being overly rose colored, but I am thinking some things are worth hanging on to, even if we have to adapt our modern life to include them. Those small rituals that keep us aware of the bigger world make change easier. They remind us there is a great continuity of life going on all the time and that our own lives have a flow as well.

Summer is almost over. It's September now and in a few weeks the nights will be much quieter. Even though there is always the lone cricket caught in the air vent or in the back of the house somewhere who fiddles on past frost, the chorus of greener days will soon be over. Think about it. You've seen all the reruns anyway and besides, you can most likely record whatever you want to see. Get up, grab a magazine to fan with, the nearest kid if you have one and head for whatever you have for a porch. Swings aren't required, mosquitoes are guaranteed, but also the chance for something far more important: settling.