Summer Shorts - Anthology

Lightning Bugs by izzywriter2

Lightning Bugs by izzywriter2

Summer is always a magical time in a child's life - those few allotted months when they are allowed to learn absolutely nothing, have no sort of structure, and just experience life.

Some families take their children on vacations to exotic locations. Others travel closer to home. Many remain home and make the best of where they are. An unlucky few children are stuck with parents who create for them the busiest schedule they can manage.

Then there are the rare few who have a home away from home. This does not mean a family cabin or lake house, a simple change of scenery - no, this means an entirely new life. A new location, of course, but also new friends, new clothing, new schedules...even a new family.

Charlie was one of those children. She was six and a half years old and every summer, her mother and father sent her away to live with her grandparents.

When Charlie was four, her grandpa had passed away. Ever since, her grandma had been living a lonely life in the Michigan woods. When she was five, Charlie's parents had decided that it would be up to her to keep the elderly woman company in the summer.

Many children would feel unwanted or unloved if they were quickly sent away from home during their summer break. Charlie, on the other hand, loved it. She adored her grandmother's old, outdated clothing for her to wear as she played in the woods surrounding her cute little cabin. She eagerly devoured the cheap canned soup and microwave macaroni and other food that her mother and father referred to as "trailer park food."

But most of all, Charlie loved the stories.

Charlie's grandmother had what her mother called "dementia." She was still in the early stage, and while the six-year-old wasn't entirely certain what this meant, she understood enough to know that her grandmother sometimes couldn't tell what was real or what was not. Most of the time, her grandmother was perfectly fine - sometimes, however, she would call Charlie "Abby," which was Charlie's mother's name, or "Debby" - Charlie's aunt's name. Other than that, Charlie's grandmother was just like everyone else aside from one other separating thing.

Her grandmother saw fairies.

And she was teaching Charlie to see them, too.

When children are as young as six and a half years old, they are a bit like dementia victims. After all, they don't always know what's real and what's not, and they are quite forgetful creatures. While Charlie was a very special little girl for a variety of reasons, she was no different in this aspect.

So in her, her grandmother found a wholly believing, eager listener for her tales of how the fairies helped the bees pollinate her flower garden, how they pulled her vegetables from the ground and kept the trees alive, how they knitted her blankets in the winter and cleared the snowy roads when she needed to get into town.

"Can I see the fairies?" Charlie always asked eagerly when she was finished.

Her grandmother always smiled fondly in response, staring off into the distance. "I don't know, Charlie. They've known me a long time, and fairies live for many years. To them, you're still an infant. They don't know if they can trust you yet."

"I'm not an infant!" Charlie would exclaim, offended. There is nothing that hurts children more than an attack on their age, meant to belittle or no, even children who know the word "infant."

"I know you're not," her grandmother would readily explain, "but the fairies don't."

"I'll make them understand," Charlie would decide firmly.