Tonight when I was walking from the car to the apartment after our trip over to IL today, I saw a young girl outside.

She was trying to catch fireflies.

I smiled.

Days like today, when I am feeling especially old, and I see little girls playing in the twilight with dirty knees and knotted hair, remind me that it really wasn't that long ago that I was catching fireflies in my parents front yard.

And as I opened the glass door to our building, I heard her say, "Oh yea, I got one!" and she giggled.

I promised my daughter that we would do that the first chance we could, when she was old enough to toddle along beside me and catch fireflies in a mason jar.

And she can keep them in her room in the mason jar until their glow fades, exactly like my mother allowed my brother and I to do, summer after summer, night after night.

And she will sleep peacefully in their glow with dirty knees and knotted hair and summer on her skin.

Much like her own mother did many years ago.