I’ve got a cricket in the basement.
He sings, and I stand at the top of the basement stairs and listen.
Sometimes as I listen I tear up a little.
Why?
Well, I was a kid who read (and reread and reread) George Selden’s The Cricket in Times Square. I loved Chester Cricket.
I was also firmly under the spell of an oversized, lavishly illustrated edition of Pinocchio—another story in which a cricket figures prominently.
So to stand and listen to this cricket is to think of those beloved fictional crickets.
And in turn, those literary crickets remind me of my mother, who bought me the books, and who read to me and with me.
And then, too, the cricket song is beautiful—plaintive and hopeful—and it takes a lot of courage to sing in this world, doesn’t it?

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