Easter

Easter Day was a nice one in these parts: typical sun-shiney, flower blooming, squirrel and bunny frolicky mid-Springtime fare. Easter dinner was held at the Younger Sister's. She's apparently made the transition from her own condo to her fiancé's with little in the way of transitional pangs. Indeed, the guy gutted his old garage (which happens to be situated immediately under the master bedroom), installed a spiral staircase down to it, and turned it into a giant walk-in closet to house her clothes and shoe habit. Mathman counted over fifty pairs of shoes in there alone, and she's left behind at least that many in our basement.

In fact, Mr. Fiancé is in the process of gutting and reassembling his house to suit his bride-to-be's whims. The wall separating the living room from the eat-in portion of the kitchen has been removed, and is apparently going to be replaced by an island/bar. Marble countertops will be installed. An existing pantry will be expanded.

I'm trying to be disdainful of their money disposal problem. It's a safer course than the jealousy lurking just around the mental corner.

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Easter morning was laid-back. I read a book, sleeping cat on my lap, Jewelry Television in the background. Sorry. I'm a sucker for baubles, and it's cheaper to look at them on television than in a jewelry store, where one tends to window-shop while constantly shadowed by friendly, on-commission sales people. While experimenting with making a sleeping cat purr, I mused on how different Easter mornings were from when I was young. Don't laugh. When you're my age, you'll be doing the same thing. Anyhow, I remembered something I hadn't thought of in a very long time.

When I was a kid I used to hunt caterpillars in the fall. Autumn is the best time to hunt the really cool ones, because that's when they're at their largest. Many caterpillars also give up their arboreal existence for the ground, as they search for secure places to hole up, cocoon, and pretend winter doesn't exist while moving on to a higher plane of existence.

About once a year I'd find a really exotic looking caterpillar. I had a luna moth caterpillar one time, and another time I found a spiky black morning cloak larvae. The best ones I'd take home to show my mom, and then keep them overnight in a shoebox full of leaves to be released the next day.

One autumn I captured a lime-green caterpillar on the road in front of my house. It had rows of bristly bumps, colored blue or red or yellow. The thing looked like a mutant: huge, garish, and apparently on urgent business that I rudely interrupted. It was chugging away, crossing the road at a speed I wouldn't have credited a caterpillar capable of. Tucked inside its box, it continued to chug away, making quick circuits about the perimeter like some crazed baseball player who can't seem to stop when he reaches home plate.

The next morning, the caterpillar was gone, replaced by a large grey cocoon firmly affixed to a bottom corner of the box. I couldn't just leave the box outside with the cocoon attached, and I couldn't remove the cocoon without risking injury to the critter. With a sheet of plastic wrap rubber banded to the top, I put the box between my bedroom window and the storm window for the winter, in hopes that that would protect the cocoon while giving it close to the right conditions to continue it's metamorphosis. I then proceeded to pretty much forget about it.

Six months later I was awakened on a frosty Easter morning to the sounds of what I first took to be a mouse scrabbling around in my room. Screwing my courage to the sticking place, I got out of bed and started searching for the erstwhile mouse, only to find the noise was coming from just outside my window. The cocoon had opened, and a newly born cecropia moth was trying to gain a perch while its half-expanded wings continued to blossom.

It being Easter, and I being the pious youngster I used to be, I immediately latched onto this as a sign from God. The symbolism of rebirth on Easter morning was just too strong for my young mind not to make the obvious association. I quickly found a larger box to house the still-growing moth, and watched my little miracle for almost an hour before the rest of the house awoke and started their day. Shortly after noon, when the sun was out and shining as strongly as it was going to that day, I released the moth.

It was only as I grew older that I realized that I'd probably released the moth to certain death. Because it had weathered winter in a slightly warmer environment than the rest of its ilk, it had hatched out weeks too early. There were no other moths around. The flowers were only just starting to open. The days were too cool. The newly arriving migrating birds were hungry and the nocturnal moth would have been bewildered in the daylight without sufficient foliage to hide in.

There's always another side to a miracle. I suppose that's in part, why
Easters no longer feel like they used to when I was a kid.