Legs and Wings

Dear Reader and Friend,

I know! It’s been a long minute since I last wrote. Far too many times to count, I sat in the chair at my desk staring out the window, on my mother’s sofa staring at the table, and on the overgrown grass thick with Creeping Charlie staring at the sky beginning to write a sentence only to decide it’s too silly of an idea to share. Instead of pushing through to the second sentence, I stopped. Closed the notebook. Put down my pen. Continued to stare at nothing important besides the sad clematis trying to grow up the lattice or the floating clouds of either lightness or darkness sharing space with a palette of blues and greys and the most eye catching of all, alerting corals. Then I asked myself: Why would I write about that?

I’ve thought about some of the topics I’ve shut down on myself the past few months. Finding home in Mira, Italy. Coffee klatsch with my friend Matilda. (FULL
DISCLOSURE: we do not gossip about people. Rather, we try to better ourselves
to better the worlds around us.) The St. Thomas couple I observed every day for a week as they went to work on their catamaran in Pacquereau Bay. The woman from New York who left her home, everything in her home, and everything on 5th Avenue then moved to St. John and has not one regret. The parmesan pepper popovers and rabbit-on-the-menu in vibrant Miami. The glitter of Mayflies two weeks ago at Birch Lake. My eighth-grade reunion. The stare down I had with a pair of milking cows grazing in an overgrown field off a dirt road in remote southwestern Michigan. The fact that I have grown the nerve to pick up dead stink bugs with my bare fingers. The feast of cicadas in my neighborhood that is louder than a rich man’s complaint. The dragonfly laying in my garage that looks as if he’s ready to flee but breathes like a stone. The pair of great blue herons that all weekend long, have been flying back and forth over and strutting back and forth under my dock through scorching sun and whistling wind and timid thunder.

This is all to say that these little daily observances are the moments that make up my days, my months, eighteen weeks, a lifetime. It never fails that the little things, such as the legs and wings of these insects and many birds and interesting people, teach me a lot about time, humanity, and how I spend my time with humans and nature.

Such as, if I were a mayfly, I’d live a day. If a stink bug, I’d live maybe over half a year before invading someone’s house. I’d be lucky to flap my wings for fifty-six days to remind someone of their loved one in heaven if I were a dragonfly. If a cicada, especially a thirteen- or seventeen-year cicada, I’d thrive for two to four weeks unless someone collected me for their dinner. As for people, there are those who believe they are the center of the world and live like locusts, and those that simply center themselves, then live in the world as ladybugs. The ladybug! She is another insect with a short lifespan. If I were a ladybug and truly lucky, I’d live a year making landings of joy and love on someone’s shoulder at the most unexpected moments.

As the great blue herons utilize their sturdy stick legs for their swooping flight and hunching to either gulp a minnow or perform a forward conga dance near the lake shoreline, I think about all the delicate flying insects, which are a thousand times less the size of the herons, that flutter and flatter through their limited lifespans.

If I were a flying insect, I think I might be a ladybug aiming to spread kindness and love and joy to those who seek it, perhaps most to the brokenhearted, and with the motto of St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta which is, I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world. We do not know when love will show up but when genuine admiration does, it last forever.

If you were a flying insect, which one would you be? This might be a silly question. Or is it? Time is ticking.

Until I write to you again, I hope your flight is with a purpose for good and in the company of kind humans. Every day is a beginning. Rush slowly and be surprised.

Marie