The next time we meet

We drove out to the country after sundown last week and threw open the bedroom windows when we arrived to cool down the warm, stuffy room before finally falling asleep.

I woke with the dawn; the cicadas song had already begun and I smiled to myself, feeling that all was right with the world as I drifted back to sleep. 

They come every seventeen years. Last time they were here I was just out of high school, anticipating what the next step of my life would bring. Next time they come I will be fifty, and my son will be like my younger self, about to enter his last year of high school. The following I will be sixty seven, then eighty four, then one hundred one, if I make it so long. 

My god, we are insignificant 

World, you are amazing.