The other day I bought 1,500 ladybugs from Dolin's Garden Center in St. Petersburg, Fla., for $9.64. Most people buy ladybugs to eat the aphids in their gardens. I bought them because they have been a significant part of my identity since even before I was born.

I was very young, not older than 4, playing in the grass outside my home on Witcher Ranch near Cripple Creek, Colo. The massive contour of Pike's Peak against the blue sky dominated the faded wooden outbuildings and the lush high-alpine alfalfa fields. Whatever it was that I was doing there on the lawn was instantly abandoned when I saw a tiny red speckled creature peering out at me from between the blades. I put my finger down next to her on the ground and she obediently climbed on. I watched curiously as she crawled over my finger, across my hand and down my arm to my elbow where she leapt back into the grass. While she was exploring my arm, I remember hearing someone tell me that the ladybug was special.

We kept all kinds of animals on the ranch: more than 100 horses, lots of cows, ducks, chickens, geese, and rabbits, three dogs, two cats, two goats and a big sow named Cinderella. Not to mention the abundant wildlife that you can find in the Rocky Mountains. So what was so special about this bug?

My parents have always said that they think of me when they see a ladybug, but they have never told me why. My parents always gave me ladybug symbols or figurines for birthdays, Christmas and sometimes without any formal reason or occasion.

One evening, in a rebellious act of adolescence, I pierced my ear with a safety pin in a friend's bathroom. Surprisingly, my mother was not upset. Instead she gave me an earring with an image of a ladybug on the stud. Giving me an earring when I expected shock only encouraged me to perform the safety pin piercing technique four more times that year. I wore many different earrings, but I always wore the ladybug. I wore it in my left ear in the third hole right between two other earrings. The first was a dream catcher pendant that I had bought with my girlfriend in Prague. I kept one and she kept the other, which she wore around her neck. The second was a shiny black stud that was supposed to symbolize the void that every American teenager was supposed to feel.

I had been in college for a few years when I stopped wearing the earrings. The girlfriend had long since moved on and the void was filled with � something else. But it was not until I lost the ladybug earring that they all came out. I casually told my mother why I had stopped wearing the earrings. She instantly replaced the ladybug with yet another figurine.

Up until this point I had believed that everyone thought ladybugs were special. Rolling the new glass figurine around my fingers I thought back to the numerous ladybug references that had been made to me. I realized that, for me, there was something about ladybugs that went deeper than their common association with good luck. I had to ask my mother, "What is the deal with the ladybugs? Why is there this reoccurring theme in my life?"

She paused, "I am not sure I am ready to tell you that story," she said.

I expected a simple answer to my simple question. Her response confused and intrigued me and I began searching for the meaning of the ladybugs in my life. My father is the only person who knows what the ladybugs mean. But when I asked him, he replied, "You will never hear that story from me."

It was a year later when I had gathered enough information from my folks to determine that the story begins the day after a rainstorm during haying season. The hay was too wet to cut. It was a nine months before my birth day and apparently there were thousands of ladybugs involved.

They would never tell me more.

I never found out for sure if a particular mountain near the ranch was involved. I cannot explain how a person could find thousands of ladybugs so late into the fall at 10,000 feet. I even tried to convince my parents that they could relay the information through a friend, thus distancing themselves and avoiding any embarrassment that may come from being honest. I gave up.

I never really forgot about the ladybugs, but I did not think about them again until I stopped to camp on the beach near Port St. Joe, Fla. I was on my way to study journalism at the Poynter Institute. I had driven close to 2,000 miles and was road weary. I needed a walk. I tossed my essentials into my backpack, threw it over my shoulders and began hiking up a narrow, sandy road. I knew the beach was on my left, so after a mile or two I changed direction and cut through the thick, snarled brush. I set up my tent just inside the tree line and climbed a dune to view the Gulf of Mexico.

I plopped down on my pack so I would not get too much sand in my pants, rolled a cigarette and uncorked the bottle of Kendall Jackson Cabernet Sauvignon that I had been saving since Dallas. I sat there and soaking up the solitude and refreshing my soul. I felt the sea breeze on my face and saw the setting sun turn the water and sky a reddish-orange hue.

I set the bottle down so I could take a dip in the gulf and there, just to the left, was a ladybug sitting on top of a yellow stem of grass. I put my hand out and let it crawl over my finger and into my palm. Holding it inches from my face I studied the tiny spotted beetle spinning small circles in my hand. I asked her why she was always there. Perhaps she understood our informal and enigmatic connection. She crawled to the tip of my finger and leapt back into the grass as if to say, "It doesn't matter."

At Poynter we learn that every detail matters in our journalistic quest to find the truth. My renewed interest in understanding what the ladybugs were about led me to search again for meaning and to purchase the ladybugs. I called my mom once more and begged her to tell me why the ladybugs were important. When I received the ladybug's story in the mail from my mother Monday, I thought about the consequences of opening it. Maybe I would learn something about myself that I don't want to know. Maybe it would say something that would disgust me. Maybe it would not say anything at all. Whatever the story said, reading it would destroy the mystery that has made my lifelong connection with the ladybug so special.

Poynter's urging to find the truth has only been a part of me for a few weeks, but the ladybug has been with me forever. After serious contemplation I decided leave the 1,500 ladybugs in the garden and to put the story in a drawer with all my other special notes to save it for another time. I may never know why the ladybug and I have such a deep association, but for now living with the mystery is more important to me than knowing the truth.

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