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. 

Bee Stings and Guilt Trips

A bee stung Brianna when she was six years old, and after that she had a terrible fear of them.

Her mother tried to be sympathetic at first. Bri was only six, the sting had swelled up badly, and it made sense for her to be afraid. After a year of listening to her daughter shriek every time a bee came near, though, she lost her patience. The final straw came during an attempted picnic at the zoo. Bri made them switch tables three times, screaming that there were too many bees and she would get stung.

“Listen, Chickie,” her mother said—a nickname that might have been cute, except she only used it when she was angry and pretending not to be. “You’re going to sit down and get over this right now. Just be still and don’t bother them. A bee won’t sting you unless he has to. It rips his stinger out and kills him.”

Brianna froze where she was. “Kills him?”

“Yep. So just sit still and be quiet and no one will get hurt.”

Even years later, as an adult, Brianna couldn’t decide what her mother’s motivation had been. Was she being nice and trying to help her daughter over a fear? Or did she know her daughter well enough to understand those words only implanted a worse fear, one that would ensure peace and quiet rather than shrieks and wailing? Bri had been an extremely sensitive child. A moment’s pain was one thing. A creature’s death on her conscience was quite another.

After Brianna married, she and her husband tried their hands at hobby beekeeping. Jeff liked the idea of fresh honey. Brianna felt, somehow, that sheltering a hive of bees in her yard made up for the bee death on her conscience from childhood. Perhaps she was still extremely sensitive.

When her mother came to visit, she regaled Jeff with embarrassing stories from Bri’s childhood. Of course, she mentioned the bees. “You wouldn’t believe how scared she was, crying like a bee sting would kill her. Guess we got you over that, though. Look at all the bees back there. You’re fearless.”

And Brianna still couldn’t decide—was her mother paying her a compliment, or mocking her? Did she know the truth? And if Brianna couldn’t figure out her own mother, how could she ever understand anyone?

She sometimes wondered how people dared to leave their houses at all.