Slowing Down - Message from a Cicada

This past weekend, we took a trek to Peever, South Dakota, a sleepy little town up north a smidge. For the Jarmans, it's a place of memories, celebration, history, legacy. Generations of the family return each year to the homestead that Grandpa Allen, at 95 years old, still calls home. We set up campers, tents, and makeshift beds made of piles of blankets in every square inch of the house.

We pull off the highway and slow down on our way through town past the kiddos on bikes, the old pump station, the lumberyard. We point out mom and dad's old house where they settled after getting married, and the spot where Grandma Char's café used to be before it was sold and met its fiery end. At the end of the road, we slow down even more as our eyes adjust to the shade of the lane that winds underneath a canopy of old trees and leads us to the farm.

Stepping out of the car, we exchange hugs and re-introductions to aunts, uncles, cousins, and kids whose names we mix up after they have grown another year older. We slow down yet again watching the littles playing and collect grasshoppers in a jar. Stories begin over a hot cup of coffee Uncle Jeff pours the moment we sit down. Remember the time...

Sometime in the afternoon (time is forgotten, remember?), a hardened cicada finds its way to the surface, digging out from its burrow to see what all the commotion is about. At this point, we are settled in a circle under the giant cottonwood whose roots he has burrowed around and called home for the past many years. We greet him and watch as he begins his long journey climbing the trunk, clinging to the bark of the ancient tree.

Time slows yet again as we wander through conversations, checking his progress, pointing him out to the kids each time they happen through our circle on their adventures. The minutes are measured not by the hands of the clock, but by the inches he climbs before settling just under the knot above our heads. Dinner is served by Uncles Frank, Bill, Brad and Jeff. The kids are fed and the cicada has a first-hand view as he hangs upside down, poking his head through the cracked shell he'll soon leave behind.

The sunlight sneaks between leaves to shine through the cicada's stained glass wings drying out so that he can take flight and provide the evening's song, the backdrop to our time around the fire tonight.

Time stands still. We share this tiny journey with a little prehistoric creature, a monumental and arduous journey in his life span, and a little message to us that time is precious, that time together is even more so, and that it's okay to slow down once in a while.

~Rachel