A Generation of Brood X and a Brooding Generation X

Two things happened in Bloomington, Indiana in 1970. I was born and the Brood X periodical cicadas emerged after 17 years underground. That’s right, I entered Bloomington a few months ahead of some nymphs hatched in 1953 that had been sucking sap for nearly two decades so that they could come out of the ground, molt, mate, make a lot of noise, and die. I suppose I entered the world with similar plans, but I was hoping to spread mine out over a longer period of time. So far, so good.

Indiana is an epicenter for the Brood X periodical cicada, one of the largest groups of periodical cicadas across the country. Because their emergence cycle is long and life brief, there is less known about these cicadas than about many other members of the animal kingdom. Not much information is to be found about the 1970 emergence, other than the fact that they hit New Jersey, where Bob Dylan was receiving an honorary degree at Princeton and he was inspired by the noisy horde to write, “Day of the Locusts.” Hey Bob, cicadas are not locusts. (Hey Princeton, you might wanna tighten up those honorary degree requirements.)

Emergence of the three Brood X species: Magicicada septendecim, Magicicada septendecula, and Magicicada cassinii did occur in southern Indiana. They hit in May and screamed around town through June, so I was only a few months old. They did not make a strong impression. I suspect this was mutual. My birth year wasn’t only a Brood X cicada year; it was also five years into the birth of Generation X and the dawn of the decade that most defines the ignored middle child of generations. Born between 1965 and 1980, we lacked the advantages of the Boomers or the parental attentiveness of Gen Z and the Millennials. Our mothers went to work, our fathers drank, our parents divorced. Our dinners were not always carefully prepared or set, and we were intimately acquainted with television, video games, and freedom. We were informed by late hippie values and the eighties Boomer backlash. We were as comfortable with deprivation and making do as we were with conspicuous consumerism. We could be found on our bikes, pedaling home to an empty house to play the record swinging in a plastic bag from our twin grip on the bag and the handlebar. Like the long waiting sapsuckers, quietly ignored until they come out to scream, flap, and fuck, we also quietly did our own thing until we loudly staked our claims. Or not.

We became professional adults with tattoos and wearing Chuck Taylors while riding skateboards to work and playing the guitar in our free time. We lived under the vast differences of the Carter and Reagan administrations, experienced the AIDS crisis, watched the “Thriller” video release on our precious MTV, watched our NASA dreams explode with the Challenger, and believed in Bill Cosby. (So, that was a real let down.) We rolled with it though. Like I said, we lived under Reagan. We know what it is like to be kicked and we can deal with it. We watched the Jetsons and the Flintstones and read the Archies, observing with interest the unfamiliar 1950’s white nuclear family suited up in the fashion of the day. We wandered the malls and we made mixtapes, leaping across the room when the song we were waiting for came on the radio and screaming at our siblings to shut up so we could open-air record every word and beat onto a Maxell 90-minute. Of course, we are not a monolith of homogeneous thought, aesthetic and experience with our Flashdance-bared shoulders, neon color scheme, and bad hair. The John Hughes films that are often cited as being emblematic of our generation are not so for anyone other than cis-gendered middle class white kids. Our memories and experiences are shared in small groups that sometimes overlap and at other times never meet. We did not all have the same experiences, but we all grew in the same time.

Periodical cicadas emerge in some areas and not others. They are an eastern phenomenon not to be confused with the many other cicada species that exist worldwide. There are annual, or dog day, cicadas in hues of green, brown, and black. They emerge in lesser numbers and sing their summer songs, which are the same mating music, but with less urgency and fanfare. The periodical cicadas, however, bring boldness in number and color. Their red eyes, shiny black bodies, and orange veined wings can be seen by the thousands and their strong song can be heard at great distances. If annual cicadas are the Cars, periodical cicadas are the Ramones.

I was blissfully unaware of the cicadas in Bloomington 1970 and since I didn’t grow up here, I was not around for the 1987 emergence. I became a resident (or Cutter if you only know Bloomington from Breaking Away) in my thirties. In 2004, when the eggs of this year’s emergence were laid, I was pregnant and parenting a three-year-old. Cicadas ruled our life for about a month that summer and in the intervening years my daughter would occasionally mention how old she would be when the next cicada summer hit. And then it finally did and she is only mildly interested in this thing that used to be a future hallmark of her life because she is seventeen years older and has had her own long years of molting and growing and is not as struck by the magic of this emergence. But I am. I love the memories that emerge as the cicadas do. Nymphs that disappeared underground before my youngest was born and when I was still married to their dad and we lived in a limestone ranch that was built just after the 1953 emergence, have grown and crawled out to discover the town has changed and people have changed. I have changed. Years blink by, 17, 34, 51. With the cicadas come memories and the eggs that successfully hatch to nymphs and make the long journey down the trees and underground, will take memories of this summer with them.

This summer is more than a cicada summer because last summer was suspended. So this year, as the cicadas emerge, so do I. Slowly and carefully because the last 14 months, marked by quarantine and isolation, have not been so terrible. We have been working and schooling remotely, making do with what is at home, and saying no to most activities. It has been noted widely that Gen X folks were built for this. Stay home and self-entertain? Okay. Wait it out? We got this. Eat leftovers and wear the same outfit for several days in a row? No problem. Put our needs aside? We always have. We are not armed with the optimism and activism of our Boomer parents nor do we rely on the face-to-face social connections of Gen Z and the Millenials. No, we have a vague sense of ennui, a willingness to dial down all expectations, and a palate for leftovers and expired snacks. We read books, play solitaire, and know how to slack. We also know how to roar, but don’t bet on knowing when to expect it. We are also doing all this with the innovations of generations at our fingertips. There is no careful re-spooling of cassette tapes with a pencil, VCR head cleaning, or stuck joysticks. And if we want to relive reflections of the Reagan years, conspicuous consumption is also at our fingertips.

So, I was born in a cicada year, am emerging in a cicada year, and perhaps I will die in one. The math doesn’t add up though. I don’t accept 68, so I am looking at either 85 or 102. I suppose I’ll take 102 because I have a lot of screaming and fucking left to do. We all do. Feel free to ignore us, we’ll do it anyway.