Friday Notes: Fireflies
For the past several months, I've been ending each workweek by writing a short Friday note to my team. Sometimes they're funny. Sometimes reflective. They're usually sparked by something small that happened during the week and the unexpected lesson that followed. It occurred to me recently that they belong here too.
When I was younger, I was convinced fireflies belonged to another world. They lived in books. They floated through movies.
I remember watching My Girl and being completely enchanted by those warm summer evenings that seemed to glow from the inside out. Fireflies drifted through the background while life happened around them, as if magic was just a normal part of summer.
Then there was Ramona and Beezus. I remember reading about Ramona catching fireflies in a jar and rereading that chapter over and over again. The idea that you could hold a little piece of light in your hands felt almost impossible.
I wanted that.
Desperately.
But growing up in California, fireflies felt about as realistic to me as unicorns. Beautiful. Enchanting. Completely unavailable. They belonged somewhere else. To someone else.
Not me.
Years later, I spent a short stretch of time living outside Chicago, in a suburb called Naperville. The house backed up to what felt like a small park. Big trees. Long grass. The kind of backyard where you half expected something magical to happen.
One evening, just after sunset, I noticed tiny flickers of light outside the window. At first I ignored them. Then another appeared. And another. Tiny sparks blinking in the darkness. I walked outside. And suddenly there they were. Hundreds of them. Floating through the trees. Hovering over the grass. Blinking on and off like someone had scattered tiny stars across the backyard and forgotten to pick them up.
I just stood there.
Completely still.
Then, because apparently every movie I had ever watched had prepared me for this exact moment, I started spinning in circles. Looking up. Looking around. Laughing at absolutely nothing. Trying to take it all in before it disappeared. It was every bit as magical as I’d imagined when I was eight years old. Maybe more.
The thing I love most about that memory isn’t actually the fireflies. It’s the surprise of it. The realization that something I’d admired from a distance for years was suddenly right there in front of me. Not on a movie screen. Not in a book. Not happening to somebody else.
Happening to me.
I’ve noticed life has a way of doing that.
Our days fill up quickly. Calendars get crowded. We move from one thing to the next without looking up for very long.
And then, every now and then, something breaks through. A conversation that stays with you. An unexpected kindness. A moment that reminds you the world is still capable of surprising you.
I think that’s one of the best reasons to keep paying attention. Not because life is magical every day.
But because every once in a while, when you least expect it...
...you look up and there are fireflies.
