Ladybugs

I went out on the back porch overlooking Rhoads Beach and sat on the wall beneath the windows of the common room. Some one was plaing chopin on the piano, and the closer I listened the farther I drifted away in my thoughts, towards our house in California, picking blackberries around the lake, my dad, and how all the fallen leaves here look like dried orange and apple peels turned in on themselves with the chill.

When the music paused for a moment I came back to myself, realizing that my arms, the book I was holding, (Richard Ford’s “The Lay of the Land”) the wall I was leaning on, was dancing with ladybugs. My mother always told me they were good luck. I didn’t want to disturb them, so I waited until they had all flown off, paper-thin wings beating frantically as they hurtled away, dipping with the changes in wind current and the burden of their own weight, before climbing off the wall and heading back indoors.