Thursday, 2026-05-28

Amber carapace
Momento of a lifetime
Easily unseen

There were a lot of cicadas in Ohio where I grew up. If I remember correctly, there was a periodic hatching when I was in elementary school. I don't recall ever seeing them, but you could always hear them, every summer.

There is one specific experience that I'll never forget. I was a young kid, playing with some toys in our bonus room. While I was rooting through a bin, I noticed a small brown object on the carpet nearby.

Insects were a special interest of mine at that age, so I recognized the silhouette as a cicada nymph. "Oh cool," I thought to myself. "I didn't know I had a toy cicada!" And I proceeded to try picking it up.

I assumed that I would make contact with something solid. Instead I crushed the empty, molted shell of a cicada between my thumb and forefinger.

That moment is etched in my soul. Never mind the mystery of how it ended up inside my house and next to my toys—the betrayal of touching a papery abandoned husk instead of plastic left a lasting impression.

While the husk itself symbolizes the realized life of its former owner, in that moment it was just another object of amusement. The irony of that is not lost to me.