A Loveliness of Ladybugs 🐞🐞🐞

This week we have a story about a wonderful childhood memory. A girl stumbles upon a loveliness of ladybugs – that is, a huge group of them – in the hollow of a tree and begins a love of the beautiful insects that has lasted throughout her life. Let’s learn about what makes a wonderful childhood memory, explore the loveliness of ladybugs, and delve into how many of the objects and creatures around us have their own unique symbolism that makes them even more special.   

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♪ Foggy Oak Farm, Foggy Oak Farm ♪♪ Come on down to, Foggy Oak Farm♪- Hi friends, welcome to Foggy Oak Fairytales. Each week, we'll bring you a new story. Some weeks, we'll share a story based on what's been happening on our real-life Foggy Oak Farm, where we have all sorts of animals and adventures. Other weeks, we'll use our imaginations and create new adventures together. I'm so glad you're here. This week, we have a story about a wonderful childhood memory, a girl stumbled upon a loveliness of ladybugs, that is a huge group of them in the hollow of a tree, and thus began a love of the insects and what they represent, luck, happiness, and more, that has lasted throughout her life. Let's learn about what makes a wonderful childhood memory, explore the loveliness of ladybugs, and delve into how many of the objects and creatures around us have their own unique symbolism that makes them even more special. This story comes from a treasured memory of my aunt, some memories stand out from our childhoods more than others. As we grow up, in addition to learning to crawl, and then to walk and talk and eat and drink and play, and all those wonderful things that are milestones on the way to becoming who we are going to be, we also are learning to remember. Our memories are the foundation for our sense of self, which is that understanding we have about who we are, how we feel about things, what we think and how we make decisions. But what is a memory? I like the explanation from the Derek Bach Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University. They say memory is the ongoing process of information retention over time. What can that look like? Well, if you've learned to ride a bike yet, or to go simpler still, if you're a young child learning to use a spoon or a fork, it's an active process at first. You have to think about every step of what you're doing. You have to grab and then hold the fork in a very certain way. You have to get the food onto the fork, you have to bring the fork to your mouth, and then you have to get the food into your mouth. At first, it seems impossible. Then it gets easier and easier. Until finally, you don't think about what you're doing actively at all. It becomes something your body and brain know and remember. That is one kind of memory formation, the development of skills. This is also called non-declarative memory. In other words, you learn a skill over time, the same way you might learn to remember faces or voices. But there's also the creation of your long-term memory, which is what helps you remember events that happen over the course of your life. These distinct memories are called declarative memories, and those are the kind of memories that we usually think about when we talk about a memory. It's where you're thinking about objects, places, people, and so forth in a unique space and time. You might remember a particularly delightful birthday or an especially fun day you had at school. The time you took a great vacation and on and on. You may not specifically remember every single day of your life. That would be a lot to remember, and not many people are able to keep all that information in their heads. But you'll have a lot of declarative memories that you can think back to as you grow up and when you're an adult. Sometimes I like to try and think about the earliest thing I can remember. For me, I think it was when I was a pretty young child, maybe two or three, maybe a little older, in the kitchen of my house, looking at a yellow phone on the wall. I mentioned this to my mom the other day, and she told me that at the time she would put me in a seat on the counter next to the dishwasher while she was working in the kitchen. And that phone, that yellow phone on the wall, is what I would have been looking at. I don't remember being in a seat or being next to my mom, but for some reason, I remember that phone. What's the earliest thing that you can remember? Maybe it's more exciting than me looking at a yellow phone. What you'll find as you get older is you may remember less and less from your early childhood as you add more and more memories from a longer life. Lots of adults can't remember anything from before they were three and a half or so. This is called childhood amnesia, which means you forget things from when you were very young. It's interesting to see what you can remember from when you were little. Maybe you can still remember lots of things, in which case lucky you, or maybe you don't remember much at all. Either way, the mind is a fascinating place. Sometimes those early memories are all the more special because we don't have many of them. This was true for my aunt. She was talking with a friend one day recently and the friend said, "I think you should learn to play more as an adult. What do you like to do to just play?" That is kind of a funny thing to think about that grownups forget how to play. But many of us do. We get into our routines and our jobs and bit by bit. We forget what it was like to swing on a playground or jump on a trampoline or swim around a pool pretending to be a mermaid. And so it was for my aunt. She didn't know how to respond. She couldn't think of anything she liked to do that could be called play. She looked at her friend with a worried expression and shrugged helplessly. Her mind was blank."Oh, very well. If you don't know how to play now, what did you like to play when you were a child?" Her friend asked instead. Again, nothing came to mind right away. But they sat together and she thought about it. Memories don't always come right away when we call them. She was getting frustrated with her inability to think of anything from her childhood that seems like play. But gradually, a memory did come. She was young, not a toddler, but not much past early elementary school, if even that old. And she was living on a farm in Georgia, which is a southern state in the United States. Summers there were hot and muggy, but everyone still spent a lot of time outside. She remembered going exploring by herself one day, kind of bored and looking for something to do, something fun, something interesting. She was wandering the property and ended up going into a small copes of trees. One of her favorites in that woods was a great old giant of a peacontry or pecan tree, depending on how you like to pronounce it. It's tall, straight, trunk, and lush, delicately pointed green leaves offered shade and comfort in the summer heat. It was also the levative everyone in the fall when its delicious nuts would ripen and be ready for harvesting to use in a range of recipes, including the sweet gooey delight that is pecan pie. The magnificent pecan or pecan is one of the most important native nut trees in North America. It loves rich soil, including river bottoms and adores the long, hot, humid summers of the south. And this particular pecan was old. It was so old that a big hollow also called a cavity had formed in part of its trunk, though the tree still lived. It was easy to imagine that hole while being full of secret things. On this particular day, my aunt lost and thought wandered across the grove to her friend, the pecan tree, planning to enjoy some of its shade and sit and think awhile. But as she drew closer to the tree, she noticed that its hollow was full of an undulating mass of bright red lay bugs. If you haven't seen a ladybug recently, they are small insects, maybe the size of one of your fingernails or a little bigger with a red domed back covered in spots. Their back is actually composed of two halves, which raise up to expose their wings so they can fly, sort of like they're on a hinge. They have a black and white midsection and a tiny black head as well, though you might only notice their midsection. These little creatures are helpful for plants and trees because they eat aphids, which are an even smaller insect that likes to eat leaves and crops. Now it is unusual to see such a large number of ladybugs. The hole was absolutely filled with them as they moved and shifted like a single living being or like a gently rolling wave. A group of ladybugs can be called lots of different things. One word is the not very interesting aggregation, but a more delightful moniker is a loveliness of ladybugs. And that was exactly what my aunt saw in the glinting jewels of thousands of tiny red bodies clustered together in the pecan tree, something utterly lovely and rare and special. That day she stood and watched the ladybugs congregate for hours. Although she hated to leave, it had started to inch toward dinner time and she heard the dinner bell clanging from the house. She had to go, but she would be back. Throughout the summer she returned to the ladybug tree to watch and dream, inspired by the thrill of seeing something she knew was not going to last, but was perfect while it did. As she grew older, my aunt had gradually forgotten the magical summer with the loveliness of ladybugs. But in her early adulthood, she had developed a habit of collecting ladybug related items without knowing why. In her house today, she even has a ladybug-themed room. But we don't always realize why we love our particular animal or object so much. It can take us time to remember what helped us grow that appreciation in the first place. When that ladybug memory came rushing back, it helped my aunt explain her lifelong affection for the little insects. She thought more about what it meant to wonder at the world and wanted to know more about the symbolism of ladybugs. They were beautiful. They now were one of her most cherished childhood memories, but was there more to ladybugs even than that? What you'll find if you look up the symbolism of ladybugs is generally quite lovely. Symbols are the meaning that is attributed to things, like how the statue of liberty in the United States is a symbol of freedom or a four leaf clover symbolizes luck. Over time, many objects and creatures in our day-to-day lives also take on their own unique meaning that is about more than just the thing itself. I might love looking at a rainbow and also appreciate that a rainbow can be known as a sign of hope. It makes me feel good and happy to see a rainbow. So back to the ladybugs. Like some of those other examples I mentioned, ladybugs are often known as a symbol of good luck. They can be known to symbolize making good changes, having loving relationships and many more things. Lots of happy feelings and good symbols are associated with ladybugs. And if those lovely ideas are tied to just a single ladybug, well, imagine what an entire aggregation of ladybugs could represent. Now, when my aunt sees a ladybug, she has both that wonderful memory and the knowledge that they can be a form of good luck and happiness. And that makes a visit from these insects even more special. It's also worth noting that even if that wasn't what ladybugs are generally thought to mean, we always have the ability to form our own symbolism, don't we? For example, some people think that crows are bad omens. That they symbolize death and bad things. But in my experience, crows are helpful and intelligent creatures that don't represent anything of the kind. We'll do an episode just about crows sometime, but know that when I see a crow, I greet it and I am glad to see it. If you're kind to crows, they will remember, and they will tell their friends and family, too. And the crows that they tell will keep a protective eye on you if they can. Are there animals or objects that mean something special to you? As for my aunt, I don't think she's been fortunate enough to come across another loveliness of ladybugs like she found when she was a child. But the nice thing about ladybugs is you never know when you might be walking through the woods and stumble upon another loveliness. That's it for this week. I'm going to go think more about my favorite memories and symbols. Consider sharing your own earliest memory and favorite symbols with someone you love, too. Thank you to my aunt, Meg, for sharing her loveliness of ladybugs memory with me so that I could share it with you. I'll see you next week. Remember, your part of the story, too, what did you think of this story? What did you imagine when you were listening? We'd love to hear your part of the story. If you and your grownup want, you can share your thoughts or a picture you drew with our Foggy Oak podcast family. You might find it easiest to share with us on Facebook at Foggy Oak Farm. But we have lots of options on our website, FoggyOakFairyTales.com. You can also check out pictures from the farm and learn more about us. Thanks for being part of this story, and I hope you'll join us next week.[MUSIC PLAYING][Music]