Gathering Wonder – Dedication

For my parents –

They lived and loved together for nearly ninety years, and fed us wonder when we were very young.

Silent Sparks is dedicated to my mother and father, who lived to the venerable ages of 95 and 99, respectively. And they were five years old when they first met.

H&V 2010 vignetteThey showed me how to appreciate the natural world. I grew up a wild child, roaming free. I swam under sparkling waterfalls, wandered through mysterious hemlock forests, and slept beneath brilliant night skies. Early on, I got hooked on life’s diversity. They loved to learn about my scientific adventures with fireflies. So when I decided two years ago to write a popular book, they were especially delighted.

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Author, capturing wonder (ca. 1956)

 

I’m writing this post during the darkest days of December. Just a few weeks ago, my Dad exhaled his last breath. He was ancient, but he was never old. He used his iPad to keep up on world news, and days before he died he completed the Sunday New York Times Crossword, in pen, as always. Dad Skyped daily with relatives and friends –  although scattered through space, these  lifelong friends showed up for daily  visits in his living room.

Though my parents will never get the chance to read Silent Sparks, I will remain eternally grateful to them for the gift of wonder. So that’s why I dedicated this book to them.

Dad cared lovingly for Mom as she declined in the grip of Parkinson’s.

 

An Unhappy Mason Jar Story

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From a retired science teacher in St. Louis, Missouri:

Illustration by John Carrozza

When my mother was young, she slipped out one evening with her Mason jar to collect some fireflies. As she ran through the grass, she tripped and fell on a rock, and the jar shattered in her hands . A sharp glass shard sliced its way through her finger. Even though she eventually lost that finger, she never did lose the love she had for these silent sparks.  

A Very Lonely Firefly

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Eric Carle 2From Jay, a software engineer in Bangalore:

Recently I was startled to find a lonely firefly wandering around my Bangalore apartment. My children had never seen a firefly! But I grew up in a town called Payangadi in Kerala, South India. In the 1980’s electricity was scarce and most nights we had no power. In my memory there used to be trees so brilliantly lit up with fireflies, they looked like Christmas trees. Mostly these fireflies appeared just after the rains, when the leaves were still moist. I’d sit and watch them through the window for hours.

LA Fireflies: Mythical or magical?

From Kevin, in Los Angeles:

Some 50 years ago in my childhood home (Mt. Prospect IL) some sort of research group offered a penny for every two fireflies us kids could collect. I’m sure we didn’t make a dent in the dense lightning bug population, but we tried. A candy bar was a nickel back then. It was the most lucrative romp imaginable.  Illustration by P.D. Eastman

Then 25 years later in Los Angeles, a good friend and native LAvian was reading a children’s book about fireflies to my kids. Afterward he said: “It’s a shame they are only a myth. It would be so magical!” It took some days and a visit to the library to convince him they were real after all. He was astonished.