Making plans to go south in a couple of weeks, to the land of the seventeen-year cicada. I know, it's all over the news right now, and it seems like I'm jumping on the hype bandwagon. But seventeen years ago, Greg and I lived in our first grad student apartment. I was just about to get my first permanent teaching contract. Greg and I would throw the tent in the car, married young couple, we, and take off to camp on weekends all over southern Indiana. The cicadas emerged and we nature-types reveled in the wonder of it. I remember the buzz that settled over everything, the piles of shells that lay at the base of every tree, the tender little split boughs where they lay their eggs. That was the summer my mom came to live with us. She was gone by the next spring. We promised ourselves all those years ago we'd be back to witness the emergence of their red-eyed progeny, and so we will.