That Time I Watched a Bug Get Naked
One of the most memorable things about being a kid in Queens, New York was the roar of the cicadas in late summer. Young cicadas would shed their juvenile exoskeletons on the trees to begin their next phase of life as winged adults. They’d fly off to sing for mates, their scratchy mating songs punctuating the summer evenings, their old beige skins abandoned on the trees of my block.
My best friend’s brother collected the exoskeletons, each day finding a few more on the trees, picking them carefully off the bark and adding them to the ever-growing stash of hollow cicada skins he kept in Dixie cups in his bedroom (gross, I know — but that’s what kids do). Some were missing a leg or two, and some were frozen in funny poses that my friend and I would imitate, but each brittle, transparent shell shared the same distinctive feature — a neat split at the shoulders — its former occupant’s exit door from its old life.
As a child, I saw an occasional live cicada on the sidewalk, likely suffering from the unforgiving concrete heat — either ambling slowly as if in a daze or circling on its back, white belly up, frantically beating its wings and rattling abrasively with the incessant buzz of a tiny electric razor. But usually, it was their empty shells I saw — hundreds of them, dappling the trees like little transparent spacesuits discarded by tiny aliens, their owners long departed, hooked feet still clinging to the bark. Though I saw the shells everywhere, I never actually saw a cicada squeeze out of one — not until I was about 25.
I was at my then-boyfriend’s house. It was early evening and dusk was falling. I forget why I was walking through their backyard alone, but that’s what I was doing when I almost walked into it — a solitary cicada at eye level on a tree, just beginning its tight squeeze from its shell. I stood transfixed. My boyfriend’s mom called for me — dinner was ready — but I wouldn’t come in. My boyfriend called me too, and then his dad, but no, I’d never seen this before, and damn it, I was going to watch it.
The tiny dramatic struggle began to play out in front of me — the adult cicada quietly emerging, slowly and painstakingly, damp, naked, and vulnerable, sharing its rite of passage only with me — a lucky audience of one. I yelled for the others to come out and watch, but they just laughed at me, the crazy girl watching a bug in the backyard.
It took about 20 minutes for the clumsy creature with bulging eyes to finally free himself completely. When he did, he climbed up on his former skin with new, tiny legs, and perched at the split as if he’d reached a mountain summit, slowly fanning his wings in triumph. I’d always found the cicadas creepy and ugly, but its transformation had been surprisingly beautiful. I was teased throughout dinner, but no one could dampen my joy; I knew I’d witnessed something precious — a fellow earth creature’s life passage — and the others had missed it. Their loss.
That cicada is long gone, but it taught me to look for the tiny, beautiful dramas that are surely playing out all around us, all the time. How many moments do we miss when we are rushing off to dinner or whatever else is so damn important?
Always make time for the unexpected surprises that pop up in front of you; they’re The Universe’s little gifts, just for you. Dinner can wait.
© Copyright Wendy Lewis, 2022
Like this story? Read more like it in Jump in the Holes: And Other Small Ways to Live Your Biggest Life by Wendy Z Lewis.
