Insect invasion

The weather here has been hot, wet, and still. Those characteristics tend to result in one of my least favorite events: termite nights. Last night, I had a friend over for dinner. I began to whimper that the termites were flying and that we needed to turn off the lights.

"Are you sure those are termites?" she asked. "You know, they also have flying ants here..."

I was sure. I told her that the fun was only beginning and that soon enough my apartment would be littered with translucent wings. "Termites," I explained, "fly on hot, windless evenings. They are attracted to lights. At some point in the evening, they drop their wings and begin mating..."

My friend laughed in disbelief and we relocated to the lawn chairs outside. Eventually, she reentered the house. When she emerged, she announced, "So, I have this friend Maya who knows about termite nights because she's from Hawaii. The termites are dropping wings just as she said they would!"

There's nothing like the confetti of wings to remind you of home.

We spent the remainder of the evening chatting outside under the palm trees and the stars. Even with the insect annoyance, the evening still had a magical quality, created perhaps by the garden's fireflies. I read her a passage from Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies that has touched me and speaks to this life I lead:

"In my son's eyes I see the ambition that had first hurled me across the world. In a few years he will graduate and pave his way, alone and unprotected. But I remind myself that he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy and strong. Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination."