I had been waiting for the seventeen year cicada hatch, the latest in a series of natural phenomenon that have elevated the state of Connecticut in my eyes to downright exotic. I was told stories by friends who were here seventeen years ago, of cicada shells being littered around like popcorn at a carnival, of black clouds of cicadas swarming around for a few days. My middle daughter has a phobia of certain kinds of flying insects; crickets, grasshoppers, moths, and I would assume cicadas, though she had never seen nor heard one before we moved to the east coast. Her younger sister gleefully googled the subject, the exposure of this achilles heel in her nemesis too tantalizing to ignore. She informed us that the ground had to be above 60 degrees for three days in a row before they could hatch. Looking at the weather report, that would put the hatch right in time for the outdoor graduation party we were having for our horrified middle daughter. My husband suggested in sotto voice that we send her away until after they hatched. Having had to kill bugs in her room often enough, with her alternately squealing in helpless fright and then shouting instructions at him at the top of her lungs (and that was only one bug at a time), the worst case scenario in his imagination was too much for him to handle. But luckily for us, and much to our younger daughter’s chagrin, the cicadas hatched in New Jersey instead.
The weather here constantly surprises me. If the hurricanes and nor’easters weren’t enough, now we are having tropical storms that pour so much water it’s as if the sky was a giant fish bowl and someone keeps turning it over and dumping it on our heads. My poor petunias keep getting battered, their velvety pink petals bravely trying to survive the rain flying from the sky in fierce volume at high speed. People’s swimming pools are brimmed. Our basement flooded from saturated ground water. You actually need an umbrella to go out. Charlie, our fearless Corgi, is so scared of the thunder, she hides under the bed panting, sweat pouring from her mouth. (Almost like middle daughter and cicadas.) But these storms are quick. They don’t settle here, they pass through. Not like the North West where it rains for days on end, storms cozily nestling between mountain ranges, as if putting their feet up by the fire and waiting for their tea. Their lengthy stays chase the ashen zombie-like inhabitants south to California or Arizona to dry out. No need to flee Connecticut from the rain. Once it stops, the sun comes out and the pavement dries quickly. When it’s dry enough that Charlie won’t pick up road grit on her belly like a Swiffer, I take both dogs for a run. The smell of lilacs and honeysuckle is intoxicating. They grow wild along some of the roads here. The rain has acted like a botanical growth hormone and what were naked forests weeks ago are now lush green jungles. Birds call to each other in a noisy chorus, as if a flock of parrots was following us on our run. Day lilies are blooming, great swathes of bright orange almost out of context next to stone walls. If I squint my eyes nearly shut to everything but that intense color, close my ears to all but the birds singing, inhale only the smell the flowers, and open my pores to the soft air and feel the heat of the sun on my skin, I could be in paradise.
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