“On the day they dropped the bomb Frank had a tablespoon and a Mason jar. What he was doing was spooning different kinds of bugs into the jar and making them fight....I can remember other bug fights we staged later on...They won't fight unless you keep shaking the jar.”

“spoon, jar, jar jar spoon”

“Do you remember those days? Back porch, sunshine, mason jars" - she paused at remembered sweetness - "we were so foolish then...thinking there was a big ol' world out there to conquer.”

“When I was a little girl, I used to try and bring sunshine to my mother. I felt so bad that she had never really seen or felt it. So I would try and catch it in jars. When that failed, I captured jars and jars of lightening bugs and told her that if we could catch enough of them, then it would look like the sun. She’d laugh, hug me, and then set them free and tell me that nothing should have to live its life in a cage. (Cassandra)”

“The lightning bugs are back. They fly low to the ground as the lawn dissolves from green to black in the dusk. Seeing them, I can reconstruct a childhood: a hot night under tall trees; the Good Humor man, in his square white truck, the freezer smoky when he reaches inside for an ice cream.The lightning bugs trapped in empty jars with holes on top. "Let them out," our mother said, "or they will die in there." We were careless. We alwaysforgot to open the jars. The bugs would be there in the morning, their yellow tails dim in the white light of the summer sun, pathetic as they lay ontheir backs. We were always horrified by what we had done. As night fell we shook them out and caught more.I relive the magic of the yellow light without the bright white of hindsight. The little flares in the darkness, a distillation of the kind of life we think we had, we wish we had, we want again.”

“My longing for someone to talk to made Himillsy the lightning bug in my honey jar. I punched holes in the lid so she could breathe.”