Cherry Blossoms, Blue Crabs and the Magic of Fireflies.

    I wish that I could have appreciated my time living in Baltimore more.  A taxing work environment, divorce and the death of my mother has me remembering that time of my life as pretty dark...some things did leave an unforgettable memory watermark...

   I vividly remember the cherry blossoms.  So many graceful shades of petal pink…like a swarm of mini ballet dancers. The enveloping thick sweet fragrance was well worth the round of "3-Claritin-a-day" days to follow.  My political views and suspicions leave me very leery of recommending anyone spend time in Washington, DC, but if you have a chance it is a magnificent sight on a scale with any other ranked natural wonder.  This amazing photo op always happens around April fool’s Day…which might be the perfect time to visit Washington, DC after all.

  They fooled me with the crabs…The “All You Can Eat” and “Crab feast” deals sound incredible to a Pacific Ocean girl…until they dump a steaming pot of Blue Crabs in front of you.  What!  They are tiny little babies…something you would use for bait to catch a Dungeness crab.  Then to make it worse, they boil them in Old Bay Seasoning, a spice blend made out of celery salt and battery acid, added to the pot by the shovelful.   So at the end of the evening, you have a pile of 23 carcasses…you are exhausted from picking…your hands are on fire from the “Old Bay” and you have eaten about a quarter cup of crab meat.  I think the whole thing is a scam to sell more beer, which is about the only thing that will wash the taste of Old Bay out of your mouth.

     On the other hand…I cherish the memory of the lightning bug miracle.  I thought a childhood vacation in North Carolina made me lightning bug savvy, but nothing could have prepared me for the enchanting phenomenon I experienced in Maryland.  You blow off the first one or two sparks...did I see something?  Maybe a piece of metal caught the porch light.  Then a few moments later there are a dozen flashes...then fifty...then a hundred...then suddenly the lawn is ablaze!   

     

     All that magical, twinkling light is a siren call to the joy-full child’s heart lying smothered under a hulky pile of adult debris.  All you can do is dance out into it with bewildered breathless wonder or lay on the grass and gaze up at fairy stars glittering only a fingertip away against the blue velvet night sky. 

     There is something pure and mystical about being enveloped like this.… I have been transfixed in the same way a few times before, once in a monarch butterfly sanctuary and another time when a herd of deer surrounded my campsite.  In that precious, breath-holding instant all time, space and boundaries cease to exist and the lovely, existential phrase… we are all one…becomes a tangible, heart-beating thing.