Lightning bugs.
That’s what we called them, because they lit up the old apple tree in the back corner of our yard.
At the sound of my brother Carver's voice, the lightning bugs flashed their flashing lights in the mason jar in which we kept them on the table beside our beds.
They softly lit our room with a warm glow.
It was beautiful and wonderful to behold.
I’ll always remember the surprising thing that happened on the day Carver was born.
He was wrapped in a blanket, snuggled by momma’s side with his big brown eyes wide open.
He was as still as the water in our farm pond on a mid July afternoon.
A lightning bug came into the room through the open window with the breeze and lit gently on his nose.
I watched in wonder as he blinked his eyes three short blinks and the lightning bug blinked it’s light three short times.
He blinked his eyes one long blink and it blinked its light one long time.
Was my newborn brother talking with the lightning bug?
Was such a thing possible?
The lightning bug took flight and went back out the window through which it came.
When he was two years old, he laid on his back underneath the shade of the old apple tree.
I laid beside him him, looking up into the branches heavy with green apples, a color of green that we can't rightly make on our own but that God seems to be able to create with a stroke from a divine brush and heavenly palate.
I was sharing my thoughts about this with Carver, talking quietly and circling the pad of my thumb around and around his chubby cheek, when a lightning bug lit on his nose and flashed its soft, yellow light three times.
His eyes turned inward toward the lightning bug.
He blinked three times himself, as if he were sharing a soft light of his own that was yet unknown to human beings but could only be understood by the natural world around him.
I knew in that moment then that he was special, the special kind of person who comes into the world once in a while to help it.
He was special indeed.
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