My Year of the "Locusts"

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Today’s post is a new third weekend thing—a monthly check-in. I shared recently about a new health challenge I’m facing and talked about how doing that was, for me, a bit unusual. I’m realizing two things. One, I want to know what’s really going on with the people in my community. Two, it feels pretty great to be supported by showing up exactly where you’re at.

So, in this check-in conversation, let’s talk about how we’d answer, “How are you?” if the question meant, “No, for real. What’s up for you?” Solemn, outrageous, sad, goofy, happy, a tangent, or geeking out on some cool nature phenomenon like mine—it’s all welcome here.

OK, here’s mine: How am I? No, for real.

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I’m blue. I’m wading, sometimes treading water. I’m waiting. I feel behind on everything. I’m really tired.

My doctor says, “I’ve never seen this.” I’m counting days till I can retake the blood test he’s referring to—start a treatment to ease the pain and slow the progression of “rat-bite erosion” of my spine (a description that should be updated, but points for drama). What about the source, though?

I keep recalling my year of the “locusts”—how they seemed to have come from out of nowhere. Soon, trillions will emerge in the eastern US, this time two broods in tandem for the first time since 1803.

In an online support group for people with my (working) diagnosis, a woman writes, “My body’s attacking me.” I want to weep.

I prefer to use my own photos and/or be a little more obscure—enhancement v. illustration. But I really wanted you to see these guys. And this is a great photo of the periodical cicada often mistaken for a locust by Sagar Vasnani on Unsplash.

The first sign wasn’t really the first. In fields across the county, white caps appeared atop saplings. I’d only tilted my head—what’s this?—before a winged horde ascended. Thick bodies the color of tar, translucent, orange-membraned wings, and scarlet eyes filled the air. F-a-r-r-o, f-a-r-r-o, f-a-r-r-o, they cried. I’d dash to my car, head covered; still, one would catch in my hair. The world became a whir that echoed in me long after silence fell.

My father-in-law stooped to scoop spent shells into a tackle box. “Locusts,” he explained, was a misnomer. These periodical cicadas had been rising from the ground every seventeen years as far back as humans recorded things and, of course, far longer.

How long was it before I connected the marble-sized alien balls we’d uncovered a couple years earlier to the cicada’s emergence? My then husband and I, while digging a foundation for a remote-control car racetrack, had upturned hundreds of them. I’d studied one on the tip of a spade for a long while, mesmerized, before dropping it suddenly. In a pupal state, pale pink, the veiny balls were at once lifeless and blueprint. “I think they’re … alive,” I’d said.

You know what I never noticed? The next brood hatching from eggs inserted into twigs on shade trees stripped bare, dropping to earth, and burrowing down to the roots below.

So, maybe what’s up for me is what I may have missed or misnamed. Or maybe it’s awe—of cycles and blueprints and what might be being planted now.

I prefer the word “message,” I tell the woman from my group. What are you telling me, my brilliant protector? I ask my immune system. Won’t you share where this started?

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How about you? What’s up for you? What do you like to geek out on? What signs or messages have you missed, or not? Have you experienced the periodical (seventeen-year or thirteen-year) cicadas?

How are you? No, for real.

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PS. Shoutout to a first reader of this post, my brother-in-law Paul, for guiding me to answer the question directly. And shoutout to Jeannine Ouellette, whose Thursday Threads, which engender really beautiful supportive comment threads, I loosely modeled this check-in on.