Gnat in the eye, bee in the mouth, moth on the door

Do you remember? Can you believe it?

The stadium lights at my brother’s baseball games held a particular kind of fascination for me. From a distance, as you approached the baseball field from the dark parking lot, you could see only the moths. Before you were surrounded by the ball players and fans and cousins and potential boyfriends, before they all joined together to draw your attention down to earth, to the bleachers, to a single white ball tinged with red dirt, there were the clouds of moths in the night sky. They swirled around each stadium light in a desperate mass, equal parts heartbreaking and unnerving. No one could give me a good answer as to why they did it, though I asked any adult I could. No one seemed to care. Just ignore them, I was told. Don’t think about it too much.

When I was twelve or thirteen a bug flew into my eye as I galloped my pony beneath the arena lights in the riding ring. I screamed, slumped over. My mother came running, panicked, shouting What happened what happened in what sounded like an increasingly angry voice when I only responded with shrieks. What had happened? A white-hot needle into my eye, a pain that squirmed until it didn’t, an eye that swelled shut around a carcass no bigger than a fleck of pepper. There is so much other pain that I’ve forgotten or can only remember abstractly, but I can recall that particular pain with such clarity that I’ve come to think of it as a thing of great beauty. A needle, my pony’s coarse mane beneath my hands, my mom’s hands on my leg.

Last summer a bee flew into my son’s mouth and stung him. He screamed and ran toward me. I didn’t have to ask him what was wrong—he shouted it between sobs. On his face, a mixture of pain and horror. This was something he hadn’t imagined happening. This was something I hadn’t imagined happening. He opened his mouth willingly for inspection, though his feet danced in pain. There was no trace of the bee, I assured him. And we could fix the small swelling with a popsicle. Now, he brings the incident up often, with great reverence. Do you remember? he asks. Can you believe it?

Two weeks ago I went down to the barn and was startled by a cecropia moth on the door. I had been lost in thought as I walked between the apple trees, as I leaned my shoulder against the edge of the heavy door to roll it open. What appeared to be a thin brown leaf stuck to the door dramatically unfurled, an inch from my eye. I jumped back. I may have yelped. I don’t remember that part.

I watched with incredulity/breathlessness/exultation (there is no right word) as the moth flexed and rotated its wings and moved its pipe-cleaner antennae gently around. I had never seen anything like it before, didn’t even know a creature such as this existed. It was as big as the sparrows that dipped along the barn rafters. I stood there for a long time, a longer time than I had. I kept feeling waves of luck, then guilt, remembering that the moth was only here, with me, because I left a light on in the barn. It no doubt got disoriented and flew to this door, beneath what it might’ve thought was moonlight and now had to rest until nightfall. I felt impossibly sad and impossibly glad, 50-50.

I have a tendency to fret about all the things that could go badly in this world. The gnat in the eye, the bee in the mouth, the things I have not yet imagined. But I hardly ever account for the moths on the door. The unexpected beauty. The unheralded gifts.

These last few days I’ve hesitated as I leave the barn in the evenings, my hand on the exterior light switch. If I leave it on, might I find another silky moth as large as the breadth of my hand the next morning? Might I be able to revisit that moment, to stand in the sunshine and the birdsong and cry over its beauty and my unworthiness one more time? Maybe. But I am not greedy, not for beauty, not for anything. I will leave this crystalline memory alone. I will turn off the light.