Happy Mother's Day

Once upon a time there was a little green caterpillar. She was a perfectly nice caterpillar, but she couldn’t help feeling she didn’t want to be a caterpillar forever. She was tired of spending all day crawling along the ground, taking forever to get anywhere. She wanted more.

Thankfully, the little green caterpillar had a mother. Her mother told her there was a reason she wanted more—that she was made for more. She showed her daughter exactly what to do to grow into the creation she was meant to be.

The little green caterpillar followed her mother’s instructions. She prepared carefully, then wrapped herself bravely in a cocoon. And just as her mother had predicted, the little green caterpillar emerged as a new creature. She was now a beautiful yellow butterfly, and she soared everywhere she wanted to go.

Happy Mother’s Day, and thank you to my mom, who taught me to spread my wings and fly.

Death by Grasshopper

Jana wasn’t ordinarily prone to paranoia, but there was something about that grasshopper. It watched her. She wouldn’t have thought it possible to feel threatened by an insect, but this grasshopper was different. It was out to get her. She knew it.

There were grasshoppers everywhere—it was that time of year—and most of them didn’t bother her a bit. This one sat on the railing beside the stairs that led up to her apartment. She noticed him right away, because he sat still and watched her pass without jumping away. The first day, she thought it was interesting. The second day, she thought it was weird. By the third day, she was creeped out.

“Get out of here,” she said to him. She waved her hand over him. “Go on. Shoo. Scat.”

He just sat and watched her. Jana thought about flicking him off the railing, but she didn’t quite dare. She was afraid he might bite her hand if she got too close.

She started noticing other grasshoppers. Though the others weren’t threatening, they gave her an opportunity to study how grasshoppers jumped. It was decidedly scary. They could jump a long way—she might feel she was safely past the one on her railing, then he could jump onto the back of her neck and bite her. She’d never heard of anyone getting bitten by a grasshopper, but she felt sure this one wasn’t like the others. This one wanted to bite her. And he was poisonous.

It got so she was afraid to go home after work. She started trying to imagine other ways to get to her apartment, some sort of pulley system she could use to hoist herself in through her bedroom window. Finally, she told her friend Tyler about it.

He laughed at her. “A grasshopper? You’re afraid of a grasshopper?”

She’d expected the mockery, and it didn’t faze her. “Will you come kill it for me? Please?”

So Tyler came to her apartment with her after work. Jana stood on the sidewalk while he went up the stairs to where the grasshopper perched, waiting.

“Big, bad bug,” Tyler said, still laughing. He raised the swatter he’d brought to kill it.

The grasshopper jumped, directly at Tyler’s face. Jana screamed as Tyler stumbled back and lost his footing. He fell backward down the stairs and lay still at the bottom.

The grasshopper landed beside Tyler’s head and looked up at Jana. Before she could think, Jana brought her foot down on him and heard the crunch as he died. Her downstairs neighbor opened his door and said, “What happened?”

“Call 911,” Jana said. “My friend had an accident.”

Tyler was hurt, but he wasn’t dead. Jana was pretty sure he’d be okay. And now, thanks to him, she was pretty sure she’d be okay, too. 

Of Wardrobes and Magic

I took this picture because the statue reminded me of my favorite childhood story. You might think I mean Peter Cottontail or The Velveteen Rabbit or The Runaway Bunny, but no. I’m talking about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

If you’ve read the book (or seen the movie, for that matter, though people who watch instead of read make me sad) you remember what the White Witch did to her enemies. She turned them to stone with one wave of her magic wand. I always thought it was a horrible fate—left frozen to be aware time was passing, but not able to join in. I’d have felt better if she’d just killed people.

The moment I saw this statue, I thought he looked like one of the White Witch’s victims. I don’t actually remember if there were any rabbits discussed among her statues, but I suppose my thinking first of Narnia says more about what the book meant to me than it does about this statue’s resemblance to any particular character. Narnia was one of the most important parts of my childhood.

I was seven when I first read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I was 37 when I last read it—it’s one of those stories I have to pull out and revisit from time to time. I imagine anyone who attaches a particular significance to books and literature probably first developed that love during childhood. I would guess we each have a particular story we can point to as the one that first showed us what a magical world books could be.

I remember one of my favorite games in the years after I first visited Narnia. I would go into my closet and shut the door—and how I wished for an actual wardrobe! I spent a minute in there, stumbling around and pretending I couldn’t find the back. When I came out, I pretended I was in the magical land of Narnia, where animals could talk (though my hamster never managed the trick) and danger lurked everywhere.

The magic doesn’t end with childhood books, of course. I still sink into magical worlds, especially if Stephen King or Jasper Fforde is writing them. Nothing matches the wonder of the first time, though—because it was a new experience, because a seven-year-old is more prone to believing in magic. Narnia has earned a forever spot in my heart. It’s what I always think of when I feel surrounded by wonder and have a sense of the world as a thin curtain. And really, the story is a perfect analogy of the magic of reading. You open a book cover instead of a wardrobe door, but you still find a new and exciting world on the other side.

So forgive me if every stone statue makes me feel sorry for the White Witch’s victims and every closed door seems to be an invitation to discovery. I can’t help but see magic in the world—I’m a reader.

Monsters With a License

She wasn’t expecting to see a snake out here, and so—at first—she didn’t. At first she saw an old sweater someone had abandoned when his walk in greenbelt behind their neighborhood made him too hot. Then the sweater raised its head and stuck its tongue out at her, and Cheri barely managed to suppress a scream.

Cheri didn’t know much about snakes, but she knew enough to be sure this wasn’t a local specimen. It may have escaped from a zoo. More likely, it was an exotic pet escaped from one of the homes along here. She’d walked a long way from her house, so she didn’t know anyone who lived in this part of the neighborhood. She scanned the backs of the houses she could see, wondering which of them had harbored this monster, wondering whether there were others around as well. Probably. The kind of person who’d choose this creature over a dog wouldn’t be satisfied with just one.

She’d just made a careful note of her exact location—the better to give details to Animal Control—and was backing slowly away when she heard someone say, “Don’t worry. He’s friendly.”

Cheri turned around. A boy with grass-stained jeans crouched in the bushes nearby. “Is this thing yours?” She tried to sound neutral but her voice came out more like that of a nun confronting a teenager with a pack of condoms.

“His name’s Herbert. He’s trained; he won’t bite.” As if to prove it, the boy crossed to the snake, picked it up and draped it over his shoulders.

“Are you crazy?” Cheri screeched.

The snake flicked its tongue out to brush the boy’s cheek. He grinned. “Herbert’s my pet. He’s got a cage in my room, but I like to bring him out here to stretch out sometimes. It makes him happy.” Then, incredibly, he turned his head to face the snake and continued in a baby voice. “Doesn’t it make you happy, Herbie?” he said, and planted a kiss on the snake’s head.

Cheri backed away from them. “That thing is not a pet. I’m calling Animal Control.”

The boy just laughed. “My dad got a license,” he said. He and the snake turned and walked up the hill toward the houses.

Cheri watched him go. At first she thought she would see which house he went into—she might call Animal Control anyway—but then she decided she really didn’t want to know. She turned and hurried back toward her end of the greenbelt.

She knew one thing for sure. From now on, she was taking her walks in the other direction. 

Everyday Miracles

When Jenny was at a crossroads in her life, when she didn’t know what to do, she liked to take long walks in the woods. She found she could think more clearly when surrounded by trees—maybe it had to do with all the extra oxygen.

She had a handful of places she liked to walk, but one time, she found a new trail and decided to take it. She walked along, not really watching where she was going, and wrestled with her problem. Should she keep pressing ahead with her current relationship, which was heading into territory she’d never experienced before, or should she break up with her boyfriend and go back to the simpler life she was more familiar with?

Eventually she realized she’d spent too much time thinking and not enough time paying attention, and she’d walked farther than she usually did. She still had to turn around and walk the same distance back to get to her car. She thought she’d better do that, so she’d know she had enough energy left to finish. But something stopped her. She wanted to go a little farther, to see what was around the bend in the trail. The total distance was farther than she’d ever walked before, but maybe it was time to push herself.

Jenny came around the bend and stopped in her tracks. A doe stood on the trail, not five feet away. She looked up from cropping grass and stared at Jenny. Jenny stared back, afraid even to breathe. She’d never been this close to a deer before. The moment hung suspended.

Then it was over. The doe leaped into the woods and left Jenny standing on the trail, stunned. If she had turned around when she wanted to, she would have missed this. Since she had pressed on past the point of comfort, she got to witness something amazing.

The encounter felt like a sign, a miraculous answer to her problem. She would press on.

Jenny’s boyfriend asked her to marry him only a few weeks later, and Jenny said yes. They were very happy together. Jenny started to take long walks not because she needed time to think through problems, but because being in the woods made her happiness even fuller.

She often walked on the trail where she’d seen the doe. Over time she realized something that made her a little sad—she almost always saw deer somewhere along that trail.

“Why on earth would that make you sad?” her husband asked. “I thought you loved seeing deer.”

“I do. But the first day I saw one, I thought it was a miraculous sign, just for me. I married you based on thinking that.”

“Well, it worked out alright, didn’t it?”

“Yes. But I thought it was something special. I thought I got to see a miracle. Now I know it was just an ordinary, every day thing.”

“Or maybe it was a miracle,” he said, and kissed her on the nose. “Maybe when you take a risk, you end up getting to see miracles every day.”