into the light…
A few weeks ago, Lucy got a silk worm from school. It lived in a plastic bowl with mulberry leaves and, when the time came, span itself into a cocoon. That bowl went from the living room to bedroom, to top shelf, to dresser. It was shown to visitors, hidden from the cleaners, dropped, picked up, put back and shown again. And I’m thinking it will be like the other silk worms we have had, the one or two of them, who never made it out of their cocoon. Who closed themselves within the expanse of their inner worlds and never came out. Lucy would forget… I would forget… and eventually she would ask and, together, we would wonder what had gone wrong.
Passing by I noticed there had been a change… Something new. Something alive, dusted, beautiful.
Breath left me. Literally. And even as I know this is the moth indeed, incredibly come out and into the world, I am wondering if it is really from the cocoon or some visitor… even though I had NEVER seen a moth such as this one, so infinitely captivating in all its trembling, gentle beauty, my mind questioned… “Really? After all that has happened, how could this birth have taken place? You’re fooling yourself. It is simply too awe-inspiringly magical.”
I called out to Lucy… and with my finger to my lips, telling her to hush and come slow and quiet, showed her the new born. With utmost care we brought him outside. Placed the bowl in the shade so that he could dry its wings and come to know the world.
After a while Lucy left. Lux came by to visit, then Adea. Came and went. And all the while I am loathe to leave this moth. This newling. This one that had lived and birthed on the dresser in Lucy and my room. How could I leave him when he knew nothing of where he was? How could I when he would be afraid.
Throughout the day I kept checking on that moth. Always there. And I wondered if perhaps he was taking his time… drying his wings. Or if perhaps he would take flight when the sun set and night made itself known.
The next day he was still there. Still in the bowl. Still on the drying mulberry leaves. Still trembling. It occurred to me that perhaps he felt safe there, in that plastic bowl. And while there was a part of me that wanted him to partake of the world, there was another part that was happy. Happy to have him. Happy that he was safe.
After a few days I became used to seeing him there. On one leaf or another. And soon I both I took his beingness for granted and came to accept that, one day, he may be gone…
Which he was.
By then I was prepared. By then the newness and awe has dulled some. I could live with his departure.
The other day I was cleaning up outside. Moving boxes and suitcases. Relocating black widows and their eggs. And there on the table, in the shade, I came across his home. That bowl with the leaves now fully dry and bunched up paper towel where he had crawled as a worm. Pulling out those leaves, the paper towel, I saw him. I was amazed that I hadn’t noticed he was still there. That I could have somehow missed him. And yet there he was. At the very bottom. I immediately felt bad for disturbing him. And began to replace what I had removed. And then, holding my breath I reached out and, for the first time, dared touch him.
Today I found the piece of paper that comes with the silk worm. The one I had never read. It gives all the information you need to know. How to care for the worm. What to feed and house it in and how, when the moth emerges he cannot eat nor fly. Cannot eat nor fly. Not with these domesticated silk worms. Once they have made their cocoons they are bred to mate, lay eggs, and starve to death.
For all the ways that I wish things could have been different for that moth. For him to fly and feel the currents of air on his wings, to breathe in the cool promise of daybreak and know what it is to dive into a flower’s heady fragrance, for all the ways I wish things could have been different… what of that moth? Was there a time when he strained, wished for heights he only dreamt of? A time when he was impatient to get from one moment so that he could get onto the next, already anticipating the one after that before even arriving there? Was there sadness, disappointment? Was there the feeling that, once my attention had passed onto other things and he was left with just the leaves and breeze and dappled sunshine, he was alone? The feeling that, no matter what it was, it was never enough?
This trembling aliveness.
Or were all those wishes and hopes and fears and disappointments, that outrage, despair and holding on tight to what seems like love all mine?
