It used to be cold. There used to be all these bugs.
Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien. A being from a planet that no longer existed. The tales of which were suspect. He could not construct for the child’s pleasure the world he’d lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child has known this better than he.
The grass used to be green in the summer not brown
In autumn, puddles would freeze overnight, and give the sharpest, sweetest snap when you stepped on them. All gone by late morning, but reappearing the next day with sharp crinkles and chimes.
mayflies used to coat the road so thoroughly in spring that their corpses made the road more slippery than black ice.
All I remember are the live bugs. I remember driving down the highway and openethe window, hundreds brought in by the draft. Saved from being splattered on the hood and windshield. Flying awkwardly as they mated midair.
I don't remember when the last time I saw one
Why did every gas station have the windshield cleaners? Because driving down the highway resulted in your windshield getting caked with dead bugs.
There used to be winters here. Actual winters - snow so deep you had to carve through it. Snow so deep that shovelling the driveway was a day's affair, and my brother and I could hollow out the piles to make forts. Snow that you were never sure quite how deep it was, because it would compact under your boot before you reached the bottom.
This year there was not a single snowfall deep enough to survive the afternoon.
I miss Christmas beetles. They used to be so abundant we would collect them and put them on our heads until we had living crowns of gold. I haven't seen a single one in years.
