On being chosen, woven.
My five year old isn’t afraid of anything, except spiders. Lately, when he sees even the tiniest one making her way (for ease, all spiders are ‘she’ in our family) from one dusty corner to another, he makes this hilarious sound somewhere between a scream and a moan - corners of his mouth turned down, eyes going wide and rigid (think Peewee Hermann). It inevitably sends the rest of us into stitches, such a surprising sound coming from this brave, both-feet-first kind of kid.
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It’s morning, early summer, on precisely day 4 of my morning ritual, which is this: drink a whole cup of tea sitting in the first sunlight, facing east (with instructions for the kids: absolutely NO interruptions unless someone is dying).
I’ve been watching the catbird to my left, doing the chug back and forth under the hydrangea I’m settled next to. I turn back to my almost empty teacup and am surprised to find a tiny, thin spider suspended over the rim. She’s obviously been here for sometime, with several threads winking in the sunlight, her body like a spinning acrobat over the mouth of the cup. I’ll admit, at first I’m a little miffed, feeling resentful that someone did interrupt this ritual of a whole cup of tea, a rarity for any parent of young children. But quickly I become curious, where did this spider fly in from, and what will she choose to do with this opening? She lithely shifts from hanging suspended to making her way over the edge, dancing down the outside of my favorite mug. Now opening her front legs in a graceful split, now weaving her other legs under her in an invisible geometry, her movement seems too beautiful to only be utilitarian. I’m not sure if she’s touching the clay cup or hovering just over it; her tiny grace is masterful in the face of gravity.
Long minutes pass watching this tiny detail of her intricate dance when she begins tip-toeing off the edge of the cup. Somehow, a pathway through open space has appeared, and she uses it effortlessly. Then, after losing myself completely for these minutes, I see my arm come into view, spider quickly making her way to it. Now, I’m not afraid of spiders per se, but I’m told I made the exact same sound my son utters upon seeing one, when I was his age. My skin tenses, my senses zoom every sensation back to the foreground. Then she stops, mid air, as if giving me time to decide. Do I want this contact? I exhale slowly, and she weaves her last few steps to my fuzzy bare arm. At first, I feel every little foot fall, and resist the urge to stop the tickle. Then I gaze in wonder as she continues, ever graceful, to simply weave me into her web. Using the tiniest hairs on my arm she gently lifts her body off mine with her own brilliant invention. I see my arm start to glimmer in the sun with a patchwork of threads – she seems to like her web woven tight and messy, not at all like the order of a giant garden orb. Finally, her movements slow, she finds the edge of the old sweatshirt sleeve pushed to my elbow, and rests. I have the sensation of breathing with all the things she’s threaded together, both known and unknown to me. Then, with such delicacy, this little spider reaches down from the cliff of my cuff to my skin and tastes me, bringing her long graceful forelegs to her mouth. Again and again, she touches, tastes, returns for more. It is the most intimate thing to witness, my heart beats between my breasts with awakened tenderness. Tears swell in my eyes, just for a moment, and a slight smile reshapes my quiet mouth.
When I’m finally called back to my family, I pick up an old root sitting at my feet, leftover from twilight gardening, and she welcomes the new texture with what I could only describe as excitement. I leave her there, in the shade of the hydrangea as the day is heating up, and walk slowly back into the house, but not before throwing back the last sweet sip of now cold tea, web threads mingling with jasmine green. It washes into me light sunlight, like a spider’s gentle kiss.