I appreciate the time that slow summer mornings afford me to take a break from prose and write through the meaning behind some of my childhood escapades.
“Upon Washing a Glass Salsa Jar”
Rinsing out a glass salsa jar yesterday and
It’s amazing how the littlest things can bring you back
Blast 22 years past and eight-year-old me
Put movies and books and encyclopedias to action when I spied
A caterpillar — or five — or fifteen
Making hollyhocks home.
Their turquoise-dotted, white-lined black velveteen features
Promised a beautiful butterfly
So I ran inside to ask Mom for a used house
To give me first-class seats to a metamorphosis.
All too happy to oblige to save her flowers,
She rummaged, unsuccessfully at first, until a glass salsa jar
Caught her eye.
I took a whiff; or rather, it took me with its spiced strength
And I asked in kid terms if it were not too pungent
For a caterpillar home.
Assuring the negative, she gifted it and I ran
To the backyard and snapped a stem
On which the juiciest guy munched.
Daily that late July I’d open the lid
Pinch my nose to avoid salsa-stench
Deposit new greens
And rotate the jar for equal parts sunned.
I tapped the glass all aquarium-like and waited for an eternity
(I don’t think we had the Internet to tell me
How long these things should take, or maybe
I didn’t have the patience to look it up.)
And finally — finally — finally….
After several long d a y s
A cocoon appeared:
Soft pointed beige intricate goodness
Treasure-chesting all the future colors from me
Delicately hanging in the center of the jar.
And then first week of August found me on a church van
Headed northwest for Glacier Kids Bible Camp
Where I met separation anxiety and footlong pixie sticks
In a world that jarred the salsa jar from my head
Until we motored home and I ran to the backyard to check my jar
Only to meet sun-blanched tanned greens
And a crispy brown shrunken cocoon.
I thought I’d asked my dad to change the leaves, rotate the jar
But I guess he’d forgotten or else I did;
And I held a murder scene in my hands for the first time
But not the last
Under-scienced, over-ardent me
Climbed our chokecherry tree a couple springtimes later
To cradle robin eggs with my hands
Before informing my parents that we had new life in our tree
Shock and compassion mixed in their faces as they sadly told me
That because I touched the nest,
The mother might not come back now
Sure enough, the next week brought some eggshells on the ground
And left some in the nest to die unwarmed —
I know because I climbed up with my hands far from it to see.
And I turned a salsa jar in my hands yesterday
And when its slightly sickly sweet smell rose to my nose
I thought of my childhood hopes for butterflies and baby robins,
Thought of every best intention to create and
What that costs others as we learn
And never was so thankful for grace.