7-year-old Kimmy was the one who told me over dinner that the Cicadas were coming. Her cute face lit up: “It has um… orangy eyes and um, you know, clear wings, so it flies around. And it goes ‘chiiiiiiiii-chiiiiiiiiiiii’. Yup! Just like that!”
I had long forgotten about the existence of cicadas. While Kimmy was enthusiastically drawing one with crayon on the paper tablecloth, I searched hard in my memory and finally that “Chiiiiiii-Chiiiiii” sound zoomed-in an old, yellow-stained snapshot of the past:
I was about the same age as Kimmy, young and carefree. Walking in between my parents, each of my hands safely locked in their hands. On my left was my father, tall and handsome. And my mother was walking on my right side. Gently smiled, she could not have been more beautiful. It was an after-dinner walk in a mid-summer night. Neighbors were outside their apartments trying to catch some breeze. Some were playing chess and some were simply just sitting on a chair, cooling themselves with bamboo-made fans. My parents occasionally stopped to chat with friends and I would just hop around them, being happy, being silly, and being a child. While all these were happening, the cicadas were resting on the trees, making their “chiiii-chiiii” sound like a background serenade in a typical summer night.
“Chiiii-Chiiiii…” Kimmy was still making that airy but somewhat annoying sound. Her drawing turned out to be pretty good, although retained little resemblance of an actual cicada. Her mom signaled her to stop so she pouted, soon began to draw a tree for her little orange-eyed friend.
