Night Of The Fireflies

Bimbo Cabidog

I once lived in a neighborhood rimmed by a patch of undergrowth. Our rented house was about two hundred meters away from the marketplace and almost the same distance from the town square where the municipal hall stood, on the opposite side. Although we lived already in an urban area, the ticket nearby afforded the experience of a rural scene.

The houses in the neighborhood were still few with wide open spaces between. Denser undergrowth hemmed the bank of the river a few hundred paces away where our street ended. On days when there were no classes (I was then in grade school yet) and the vibrant sun was up at eight or nine in the morning, I would wander into the surrounding nature bringing top-of-the-line bird hunting equipment, a slingshot.

The spot hummed with life. Chirping and buzzing were all over. I instinctively turned on my body radar for bird detection. The beautifully feathered kingfishers flitted in the thick canopy of leaves atop the tall trees. I always had bad luck with birds. So I content with spending the rest of the hunt catching dragon flies with a midrib from palm leaves tipped by the sap of a jackfruit tree.

I could spend the whole day lost in the mini jungle. But my father’s voice would ring near noon. And to signal the time to terminate the useless fling, he held the belt around his waist. I still couldn’t figure why we had to eat at twelve. But lunch was mandatory. Past it I was obligated to lay down for siesta.

In the noonday nap, I briefly dreamed of losing myself amid the forest of shrubs and bushes blanketed by an iridescent sea of yellow button-like flowers that broke into a dense swirl of malobago trees. Then I met the spirits inviting me to live in their dazzling kingdom.

Already awake at midafternoon, I would no longer go back to the nature trip, but waited for another thrilling sight to end the day. As the huge disk of blinding sun descended into the mountains, the bats flapped out of their day’s roost. The formations of the nocturnal creatures in flight above darkened the land with the advanced shadows of the coming night.

The night had a main attraction. I watched by the window the palisade of malobago growths disappear into the blackness and reemerge in evolving shapes mystically lit by an ethereal radiance. The radiance came from myriads of pin lights dancing in the ink black hollow of evening.

The bright scene at the Las Vegas strip that I would frequently see in movies in later years paled compared to the splendor of that nightly show. I had seen massive Christmas lights bathed houses and flooded streets, like the popular attraction at a posh subdivision in Mandaluyong during the yuletide season. I wouldn’t trade with it the mystery that I beheld every night in that time of my life.

Such was the nightly appearance of the fireflies transforming the ticket of malobago trees in our town into a theater. How I’ve yearned to embrace it. But the mesmerizing beauty was not for anyone to possess. It could not be wrapped in all its wholeness.

Childhood could be a dream and waking growing up. I had been a poor would-be marksman trying my luck with a crude slingshot. But somehow the hunt was not that much important. It was a child’s enchantment with nature, flowing with innocent belief. Adulthood overtook and snatched the gem away.

Electricity came to town when I was in second year high school. At that stage, I was already being taught to be a proud young man and have ambitions. Decades later, the environs I used to roam have vanished in the invasion of houses. I entirely lost the nights of the fireflies and a childhood forever.