Crickets

In the other places I've lived -- many parts of Idaho and France, an odd combination, that -- I never took the crickets for granted.

Then we moved to Sugar City. For the first summer we lived here, the wind blew daily. That was eight years ago. And for the first time, this summer, we have crickets.

I grew up with crickets. That wild backyard Dad planted, with more than a hundred trees crammed onto less than a quarter of an acre, populated with chickens, dogs and cats, birds, was cricket heaven. For a few years, I slept in a room attached to the garage, where the bugs entered nightly. I never chased the crickets out. I love the noise they make, and lay awake many a night, wondering how they made that noise, rubbing their legs together. I wondered at the creations of God, who created birds to sing, and crickets to sing, I think, with joy.

Seven cricketless years in Sugar City were off kilter in that small way. Many nights I'd sit on the front porch, listening to the meadowlarks, the robins sing, but never the crickets. They just weren't there. Where were they, I wondered. Had Sugar City committed some gross sin against God and Nature to chase these magnificent creatures from the verges of our flower beds and from the cracks in our foundations?

Their return this summer brought me back to that back yard, simpler times, that room where the crickets sang me to sleep.

Thanks, God.