consolationland

(The house in this picture is not the same dwelling as the one in this story, for reasons which will be clear soon. It is added here only for ambient nostalgia value.)

On Day 1, Mom was kneeling in the back room. Planks and wood pieces were stacked on the floor. On graph paper she was marking measurements and angles, and penciling the wood using a tape measure and yardstick. 

   “Mom?” I was back from the bus after my half day at school. “Whatcha doin’?”

“Never you mind,” she said with a smile, and went on working on her latest project.

Mom was always working, doing everything perfectly and fast. She could make anything out of anything. She thought things up, then made them with her own two hands. She scrubbed and painted and polished, cooked and baked. In spare time she sewed clothes,  knitted sweaters and scarves, and crocheted afghan quilts. She painted rooms and hung wallpaper. She got bricks and concrete and built steps and a garden wall. She raised fruit and vegetables. She made glass pendants and silk flowers and stuffed animals and tartan wool plaid covers for my schoolbooks. One time she traced my feet on a piece of thick cork and cut it into soles and crocheted snug sandals out of cord with wool tops. I was excited about trying them on, but she threw them away because they weren’t as good as the ones that she imagined. 

On Day 3, the back room was all cleared and swept.

   “Where is the wood?” I asked.

   “Go out back and look,” she said, mixing up a meat loaf in the kitchen.

I ran outside. There in the backyard under the neighbor’s dogwood tree was a brand new little house, just the right size for someone like me. The light solid wood shone palomino color in the sun. The house had a step, and a plank floor, and a door and window, and a peaked roof with a scalloped strip all around, like a gingerbread house in a fairy tale.

I ran in to the kitchen. “Mom! A play house? For me??”

   “For you.” She patted the meat loaf into shape and lit the gas oven.

   “Can I invite my friends for tea parties, and take the doll dishes outside?”

   “Yes. It’s your play house. You can play any way you want.” She scrubbed the potatoes.

   “Can I put my blackboard there and play school?”

   “Yes! It’s your play house. Go ahead.” She wrapped the potatoes in foil.

   “Can I grow flowers in the window and put crumbs there for the birds?”

   “YES,” she laughed. “It’s YOUR play house! Wash hands for supper.”

That night I couldn’t fall asleep thinking about the play house. We can have tea parties with the doll tea set. We can put up the blackboard and run a school for the little kids on the street. In the window we can hang flowers. Like, red geraniums or something bright. If I put out bread pieces and stay still, the birds can come and feel safe there with me.

On Day 4 I ran home from school. At our house there was wood at the curb. They were light lumber pieces broken here and there with the nails torn out, and strips of scalloping all next to the trash can waiting for the garbage truck.

I ran into the kitchen. “My play house! What happened?”

   “Oh I don’t know.” Mom was working hard, scouring the stove. “Some boys came through the yard and acted up. They wrote on the wall, or something. Don’t breathe in here, I sprayed oven cleaner. Go play outside!”

I went out under the dogwood tree and stood in the rectangle of flat grass. It was a wrong time to talk to Mom. She needed everybody to leave her alone and let her work. And even later, there was no point in asking. She moved on right away to her next project, designing and supervising every step when a construction crew put on a new second floor and new bathroom. Then she sanded down the floors, and got a team to put down varnish. She braided rag rugs for the doorways. She sewed upholstery covers and bolsters for the old sofa to make it look nice. She started running a Scout troop, and the church education program, and the school drama club. 

Now it’s miles and years away, in a town full of fine woodcraft construction. Older homes and yards come with toy houses, child sized. Some are in branches with rope ladders. Some are on boulders in rock gardens. Some have little box hedges and tiny gates. Some have shutters, flower boxes and curtains, or tables and chairs. There are name signs, ceramic lawn animals, bright colors softened down by weather and moss. All of them look well scuffed and played in, by people grown and gone. 

Passing by, I always stop and admire, and think back to a story with another ending that says “Sweetheart, sometimes when you build something beautiful, the world will come and try to hurt it. For us, it was boys who maybe don’t have a play house, or parents to build it. But you and I can scrub off what they threw at the walls, or paint over what they wrote there. Maybe the house won’t ever be as good as new. But we can still care for it. It can still be ours.” 

Little houses in older-fashioned yards have a cozy sentimental appeal. But they don’t shine like mine did, the night I jumped out of bed to look at its window and door and scalloped roof. In my dreams it’s gleaming there still, moonlit palomino wood and trim angles and fresh smell. It’s spilling over with red flowers and eager birds. The lady of the house is caring for them all, serving bread bits and tea for everybody. 

Our Festschrift Day excitement began at 6:00 am.

The team hit the ground running. We racewalked to the all-night copy center, to food services, to the research library to scout out a quote that the keynote speaker needed, to the florist, to the ice machine, to the offices of the top brass to round up their written good wishes on a giant greeting card tied up with ribbon, to the trophy/award store to pick up the crystal pyramid with name engraving, to the rest rooms to monitor tidiness and stock up on extra paper supplies. We lined up chairs along the carpet pattern in the auditorium, draped and bannered the dais, tested the panelist microphones, cued up the tape deck with blank cassettes labeled and ready, proofed the names and titles in the invitation list, stacked the programs by the door, set the tables with red cloth, unwrapped the flowers and set them up in vases, set out glasses, filled the pitchers with water and fresh ice, and stood back to admire it all. Show time!

Now our guest of honor was on the way. The scholars had lured him out for this dark and stormy night to preside over an evening of lectures. They didn’t let him know that the lectures were all about him. This Festschrift was a surprise, a whole intellectual bouquet of tributes dedicated to his lifetime accomplishments in academics, research, comparative political systems, and publishing. Tomorrow I’d take the list of panel talks, and enter all the titles in the Invited Presentation section of everybody’s curriculum vitae. Then I’d transcribe the tapes of lectures and extemporaneous comments and questions and answers. Then we’d put that in a manuscript and publish the proceedings in a bound journal for sale in our bookstore and gifts for the experts who attended.

But for now, Catering showed up to take over for the evening. So I headed down the hall for the two-block walk to the back of the building, then down three floors to my office. I got out of the good shoes and stockings and long red dress suit, into sensible clothes for the walk home: army surplus trousers, hood sweatshirt, ski hat, supersized khaki knapsack crammed with books from the research library sale, long green rain tarp over all, and the ruination shoes — sneakers with soles peeling off. (Wearing them saved the shoe leather from my better footwear, though they made a comical flippery noise at every step.) With a sigh of relief I stepped out the back utility door and into the wind and rain along the parking lot. Driveway. Dumpsters. Fleeing rat. Loading dock, grated and locked up.

Wait, what?
Facilities was supposed to open that grate at 6:30 pm! At 7:00, Specialty Bakers was due with pastries and a tall tiered cake. If that grate was locked, the courier might drive the cake back and try to call Catering, who were all out of their offices and standing at their posts in the hall. Would he just leave that cake out on the ramp wall? That would be a poor outcome, as any listen to “MacArthur Park” can tell us. Now what? Email and cell phones were years away in the future. This was a job for a personal messenger.

We staff weren’t issued keys to the utility exit. So I ran across the lot for one block to the end of the street, two blocks right, one block right again to the main entrance. I charged past the elevators (both full, both too slow anyway), up two floors, through a bevy of guests, to the Catering team. Soon they beelined for the back door to open the grate.

To catch my breath I backed into the auditorium alcove with its two loveseats and large  mirror. I mopped off my sweating forehead and polished the steam off my eyeglasses. Putting on the glasses I noticed a petite solitary figure on one loveseat, looking lovely in a dress and jacket of turquoise brocade, highlighting her blue eyes and silver hair. 

It was Mrs. Professor.
That’s what she called herself, loyal to an earlier American custom of taking the rank and name of her spouse — our Festschrift guest of honor himself, who even now was running off to the dais. Usually she’d be with him, attracting a circle of their peers. She was always in her element at social gatherings. Why wasn’t she in the auditorium now?

A moment’s reflection turned up a possible reason. Not long before this, Mr. Professor went home for lunch and found Mrs. Professor packing for their summer trip with the children to Mackinac Island. Problem was, there was no trip in the works. This wasn’t summer, and they’d given up that Mackinac house years before, and those kids were middle-aged now with teenagers of their own. Ever since, Mrs. Professor grew distracted and upset in bustle and crowds, and was uneasy alone without Professor at her side.

So after the Mackinac incident, Professor came to the break room to ask the staff for a little favor. He asked us to find him immediately, every time his wife called the office. He also asked us to assure his callers and visitors that Professor would be back soon, at those times when he slipped away to check on his wife at home. Naturally, we were ready to help this kind courtly pair who survived the Depression and his wartime service overseas and some major illnesses together in mutual devotion. It was only right to pitch in a bit for their convenience and comfort.

Now I sidled up quietly to Mrs. Professor, giving her a smile.
She gave me a bright glance and a deep nod, but peered at my face with growing bewilderment. I slid back my rain hood, untied the sweatshirt drawstring, and pulled off the ski cap to give her a better look at me. She’d seen me around the center for years. I was forever trundling in with bookcarts of Professor’s library requests, or with sandwich trays for his seminars, or with a spray bottle and chamois cloth to polish his glass-topped book display table. One time she was amused to see me crawl out from under Professor’s desk after troubleshooting his phone line. She’d praised my Catholic schoolgirl cursive, recording Professor’s messages on little carbon-copy pink slips. And on her calls to the center she even complimented my phone manners.

Those phone manners came in handy now as I started talking to her. At the sound of my voice, she looked relieved and attentive. When I stopped talking her attention unraveled, distracted by the company milling around and their animated chitchat. So I stepped in front, to shield her view from the fuss in the main hall. Then she flinched at the shadow from the rain tarp, so I crouched down at her level. Then I started talking again, floundering around for whatever pleasantries her social set might use. I exclaimed over her lovely outfit and accessories, talked about the weather, pointed out the decorations for this evening’s event.

She nodded agreeably, and extended her hand.
After our handshake I opened my fingers and stood up to sit beside her on the other loveseat. As I drew away, she looked with some anxiety toward the door as if wishing to make her exit. So I knelt down, offering my hand again. She clasped it firmly, smiling again as I went on impersonating more society talk, drawn from editing Professor’s curriculum vitae and tribute biographies and press clips, and from his social anecdotes overheard at the office. I reminisced hearsay details about her adventures living overseas, her elegant supper menus, her heirloom fruit home preserves, her petit point needlework, her dried aromatic flower wreaths and sachets, her pets, her son and daughter, and Professor’s accomplishments listed in the evening’s program. 

In the hall the panelists’ voices festschrifted on and on, with smatters of applause.
Shifting my pack with its load of books, of which one hardbound corner was pressing into my spine, I glanced around to watch for Mr. Professor — and spotted our reflection in the mirror. There we were, in view of the guests. One graceful lady in silver and blue with an apprehensive smile. One wet figure latched on to her hand, towering over in an indecent proposal pose, with Clem Kadiddlehopper shoes and a getup like the rear half of a Morris Dance horse costume. Tears of chagrin sprang to my eyes; so much for my fuss to make it a nice evening, and to be a considerate hostess to a solitary guest. What a spectacle! If this were an advert idea, United Colors of Benneton would turn it down as too edgy.

Mrs. Professor leaned forward. She patted my hand between both of hers. 
She gave me a nod and a smile of encouragement, patting away.
I wiped my eyes with the ski cap, shrugged, and burst out laughing. So did she.

And it could have been the tiredness, or the tears; but somehow things just started blending together. Panelists and guests, caterers to and fro; flowers and pastries and bunting and dumpsters and the one fleeing rat — Whatever! We were all just creatures, running around, trying to team up and make something nice out of a dark evening and talk about meaningful things and have cake. It was just another medieval stained glass window with divine figures trailing glory center stage and then off in the corner some little gargoyle looking on, gnawing on a mangelwurzel.

This lovely lady and I were still holding hands and laughing when Professor came rushing up dressed to go, holding a coat and scarf and crystal pyramid token of esteem. “My dear!” he hailed his wife, offering a startled but kind glance to me and his elbow to her, draping her in her coat. “My dear, shall we?”
She stood and tied his scarf around his neck with tenderness and precision. She fastened his top button, smoothing his lapel. Then she turned to me, fastening my sweatshirt hood drawstring with a little pat. They turned to go. She took his arm.  That was the last I ever saw of them; Professor retired with honors and a warm sendoff, and the two moved off to be with family in quieter climes.

I helped myself to a cream cheese marble brownie for the road, with some supersize dinner napkins. Crossing the bridge in the wind and rain I loped along, admiring the city lights, munching my goody. It was a blessing to be out in the fresh air for a bracing hour’s walk. It was a bigger blessing to get back to my warm room, set down that load of books, and get some rest.

The dinner napkins were just right for packing the ruination shoes and propping open the soles. Set beside the radiator as I crashed headlong into bed and slept, they were dry by morning.

___________________

Fact Check: The house was not on Mackinac. It was in another quaint and scenic getaway. But as disguise devices go, Mackinac had a nice sound. I heard of it in Girl of the Limberlost and a picturesque pastel movie with Christopher Reeve. 

(Small retraction: Historically informed readers may point out an inconsistency, that the hit parade song on the transistor radio was released several years after the change in the name of the airport. They’re right, too.)

Sirens are the loudest. 

It’s like the sky is barking right into your mind, and then wailing like air raids in a war movie. The siren is right over on Allen Street, on a pole in Mrs. R’s backyard. One time Mom went to visit Mrs. R., and I ran outside to play with Beagle. Just then the siren went off. Beagle just wailed around in circles, dragging his soft velvety ears all along the grass. I wanted to catch Beagle and help him, but I fell on the ground holding the bones in my skull. They were buzzing so hard I couldn’t think.

Sirens have to be loud in case Russia drops the bomb. Then we’ll have to get under our desks and say the rosary. So the fire department tests them every day at twelve o’clock sharp. Sirens at noon means it’s probably not Russia and probably nothing’s on fire, just time to stop and pray The Angelus and then walk home for lunch. 

If sirens go off in the dark, it’s maybe Russia but probably something burning. All that howling and hollering is really a code to tell the firemen what zone the fire is, and how many station houses need to come to the rescue and also volunteer men with blue lights on the car dashboard so everybody knows to get out of their way. If the fire gets bigger there are sirens from the next district over, and maybe the one next to that.

When the sirens stop, the worst fire signal is a loud robot voice growling notes that don’t fit together and sound terrible on your nerves: 

EE D-F A, EE D-F A, C-D-C B.  EE D-F A, EE D-F A, C-D-C B.

That sounds like code too. Maybe it says All the children, All the children, are dead. It goes on for a long time. Then it stops and the night is silent. Then it kicks up again. Then it stops and the night is silent. Just when you think it’s over, it’s not! It will kick up a few more times. You can hold your ears and hide your head in your pillowcase. But one time I couldn’t stand the robot voice any more, and trying to escape under the covers I tore the bottom bedsheet right in half.

With all that racket there is no way to get to sleep anyway, so it’s a good time to go check the upstairs windows for smoke, and listen for trucks to make sure they are on the way and not on the way here. Also every night after Mom tucks me in I get up again and line up some clothes and shoes and a snow hat at the foot of the bed to grab and go in case the trucks come for us. The closest it got was late one night at Lombardo’s Shoes with the poster in the window of Papa Geppetto hammering a heel with nails in his mouth. Out the window there was the smoke right over the trees! The boys were allowed to get dressed and run down Hillside Avenue for a look.  

Then in rainy weather, here comes the jet planes. Dad says if you hear a whistle from away far off, then it’s a real jet and not just a regular propellor plane. We’re on the flight path to Idlewild so in the rain or especially fog, planes fly right over the TV antennas. The boys go out and watch for the different airline and plane types, and argue what kind is going over now. Then in the house, the TV picture rolls up every time, and Dad has to wiggle the rabbit ears on top, or reach in the back and jiggle the knob until the picture slows down and stays put. If people are talking and trying to hear each other, or on the phone, they have to just sit and wait until the plane goes by. 

If a room is dark and quiet, and you’re just lying there, it’s easy to hear the first sound. It’s a shivery jingle in the windowpanes, or a spoon in a glass, or china animals on a shelf. If the whistle starts, the jet is on its way. If the lights are really low I go look outside and make sure the pilot is high enough. That’s another reason to keep clothes and shoes handy, because you never know. Then when the lights sweep over the house and things finally stop jingling, it’s ok to lie down until the next plane.

Was that thunder? Oh no. Time to shut the windows and unplug the angel night light, and make sure the lamp is unplugged too. Then I make a nest with the blanket away from the windows at the top of the stairs, and hold the St. Joseph’s Family Bible and look at the color holy pictures inside until the storm is over. If it gets bad Mom will let me come downstairs a while.  

There’s another noise to worry about, and it isn’t even real. It’s being sick in bed with a fever. A fever sounds like cotton balls crashing like cymbals on your ears. Then you can even see your pulse flicking on and off in the shadows and tiny bubbles start filling up the room. The bubbles aren’t really there and bubbles can’t hurt you, but it feels like if the bubbles fill the room you’ll drown. So when they climb the walls I wake up and kick off all the blankets until the cotton crash simmers down and the bubbles go away again. 

Other noises are pretty loud, but mostly they are just ordinary things. The radiators bang and hiss steam, and Mom comes in at night and fills the metal pans on the side with water. Neighbors are yelling in their windows all around, because they didn’t finish their yelling during the day. The dogs are barking news back and forth, and cats fight in the bushes. Hillside Avenue a block away has motorcycles and sometimes drag racers with skidding and brakes. If somebody hits a pole, there goes our lights. Two times there were crashes and people even died. One night a car flipped over turning the next corner, and the men went running to see what happened and meet the police. After a while the rescue people and the tow trucks left, and the men cleaned up the street. Next day the parents didn’t talk about it, and we kids knew better than to ask. When we went out to play in the morning there was nothing left but some glass sparkling on the lawn around the block. 

Sometimes to get some rest I pretend I can’t hear anything any more. I even practice spelling words quietly in the dark, from the hand alphabet in my Helen Keller book.  

But some sounds are fine.

It’s nice to hear Mom up at night taking racks of cookies out of the oven. Or the teenage boys outside on the corner chatting and playing their transistor radio. It’s interesting to hear the hit parade of all the songs if it’s not that Napoleon 14 guy with the clowny voice. There’s a rough chime when the men drag the steel garbage cans to the curb on Monday nights. The trains on the LIRR sound like long harmonicas dippling along higher and then lower and then higher up again, and you can picture the people tucked in to bright square windows going home. 

There are click bugs and crickets or raindrops or icicles or snow. There’s our maple trees all along the street. In winter the branches hum, and in summer they shush their leaves. In storms there’s the tall flag at the garbage dump, and the rope and metal braces bang on the pole and make a nice bell sound Bink Bink.

Televisions downstairs and in the other houses have the vacuum tubes humming really high eeeee and blue lights flickering through the curtains. You can tell all the different shows by the theme songs. Perry Mason is a spider walking up your arm, and then glass bottles rolling around in a speeding car. Bonanza is horses bouncing around if you put twangy rubber bands on their hoofs. Dr. Kildare has a real melody of notes in a soft pattern and it has a harp and church bells. Twelve O’Clock High is even better with even more church bells.

If we are lucky there’s a Goodyear Blimp going to the World’s Fair with bright electric letters running all along the sides like the sign at Radio City. One time Dad woke us up to go hear crowds of geese honking over the roof, and sometimes he’ll come inside and call us to look out if there’s a satellite. One time the most amazing sound was a mockingbird. My John Kieran book says they are only in The South but there he was right outside in the moonlight, imitating all kinds of other birds.

But the best sound happens right before the sky gets light. First the rooster way over at Rhodes Farm calls out a tiny silver thread of E-e-e-aaa. Then especially if it’s springtime and drizzling, that wakes up the robins. Robins are the nicest sound blending in with raindrops on leaves. There are hundreds of them out there in their trees all over town, knitting their voices together in a whole soft curtain Cheeraleep Cheeraloop wooty-woot Cheeraleep!

That means night is really over. We made it until morning.

Back in the day, August was bug time. Insects were everywhere, sharing our lives whether we asked them to or didn’t.

Houseflies got in through the screen door no matter what, landing to rub their little faces and tap the kitchen table with their tongues if they got half a chance. That meant running to get the fly swatter from inside the closet door, because if they landed on our hands we’d get the typhoid fever. We had no idea what typhoid was, but we knew to run for that swatter when they got in the kitchen.

Dive-bomb beetles came in at night to bounce off the walls during the best part of TV movies and right into our lemonade.

Cicadas rattled the air every day. We called them locusts, hefty noisemakers in green military camouflage and armor and clear wings, thrumming around in treetops and then leaving empty molted shells of papery brown skin and glassy eyes clinging to the bark.

Ant wars looked like a pound of coffee grounds in motion dumped on the sidewalk. Every so often they even sprouted wings and came right into the house to swarm on the curtains.

Inchworms spun around on invisible threads to drop down and hunch and wave along. They got into Mom’s petunias, so we had to coax them out and put them back on the trees.

Rose beetles hid in the roses, ready to burble out and ambush our noses when we stopped for a perfume sniff.

Tomato hornworms could strip a whole tomato stem in no time. A common chore for children was to check all the plants and pick the caterpillars off, and to wave away the white cabbage butterflies before they could lay eggs. We also had termite duty, checking all the concrete foundations of the house with the garden hose, to wash away anything that looked like a sand tunnel leading up into the wall shingles.

Click bugs ticked at night before thunderstorms.

Some moths were beige and got into the pantry for the flour, and then we had to shoo them away outside. White moths circled and circled the porch lights at night. But the prettiest kind was Sweetheart moths. They sat there on a tree like just part of the bark. But if you got close they opened their pretty pink underwings and flew away.

Praying mantises the size of your hand rocked back and forth on branches and twisted their tiny heads around to stare at us. We kids knew that if we killed one there was a fifty dollar fine, and the police would knock on the door and tell your parents and take the money out of your allowance for like a whole year.

Candy-striped leafhoppers had beautiful red and turquoise stripes, and lived on the wooden street light pole.

Dining needles, or darning needles, or dragonflies, were pretty too. Their wings were so fast and clear that you couldn’t see them. Instead you could see that they were very thin shiny bright blue or green sticks. Tt the edges of ponds and streams they skipped around forward and sideways, flashing in the sun.

Yellowjackets would be all over a soda can or hamburger in no time if we left them on the picnic table.

Nobody liked spiders, but we had to let them stay around to get at the flies.

Everybody liked ladybugs. If you hold still and let them walk to the tip of your finger, they pick up their red shell wings and unfold their black lacy wings underneath and sail away. We counted the spots on their back to see how old they were, because they grow a new spot every year.

Crickets were good luck, so we didn’t mess with them. It was nice when one crept in under the warm oil burner and kept chirping right into frosty weather. We knew about Dolbear’s Law, how we could count the chirps in 14 seconds and add 40 and get the temperature outside. But it took a lot of arguing to get the kids to agree on what was 14 seconds and which cricket we were listening to, so all the crickets generally got quiet until we let them be.

Lightning bugs trailed their lights around after dark, nestling with their stickly feet and pink and black stripes, turning our cupped hands into magic lanterns.

Bees were everywhere, hard at work with multiple armfuls of fluffy yellow pollen. So were butterflies: Tiger Swallowtail, Zebra Swallowtail, Mourning Cloak, Skipper, Painted Lady, Monarch, Cloudless Sulphur, Buckeye, Red Admiral.

But in life with bugs, I had this dream of finding the most beautiful insect of all — a Hyalophora cecropia, a Cecropia moth. I read up enough to know that the Norway Maples lining the street would be just the right habitat for them, and knew just what color pattern to watch for at what time of year. I kept going to Martin’s Candy Store and soda fountain, and asking for any empty cigar boxes. Finally one day Mr. Martin happened to have one in the trash, and he fished it out for me — a real Dutch Masters, with men in black hats standing around in the picture. Then I asked Mom for some cotton from the medicine cabinet, and pins from the sew box, and moth balls from the linen closet. I drew a nice label on an index card, with a space for the place and date of capture. With display case and butterfly net ready, with daily patrols around the neighborhood, I was all set for that moth to show up.

There was competition though; pesticides and light pollution and habitat loss. And there are plenty of natural enemies out there, from parasitic wasps to squirrels and birds, who find an appealing target in a red white and brown moth with a seven inch wingspan. One summer slipped by, then the next. Only one moth turned up on a morning after a big storm, a traveler with shredded wings who latched on to our kitchen light to breathe his last until he spiralled to the ground.

Summers and years went on, and later I was a teenager at college, walking around in a lot of locked-in sadness and not knowing why. But one day Mom and Dad invited a favorite guest for supper, a cheerful friendly elder priest from Ireland. He’d spent his summers helping out at our parish, and his kindly counsel in the confessional was a real comfort over the years. It was comfort too to have that little distraction for the day, helping Mom with the meal.

By noon, everything was planned out. The patio furniture was scrubbed and hosed off, the garden was watered, the table settings were ready to carry outside, the flowers were earmarked to cut for the centerpiece, the citrus-scented citronella candles were set out (our insect friends included mosquitoes). The vegetables were picked and trimmed, the meal all prepped for final cooking and assembly. I stopped to rest in the kitchen garden doorway, looking around to see it all through the eyes of a guest. What more could I set out, for an appealing atmosphere?

Maybe this Cecropia.
It landed on the house, right at my shoulder. It was a perfect specimen seven inches wide, in warm vivid oxblood-brown with red and white highlights, a furry red body, and feathered red antennae. I slid sideways inch by inch, lifted a fluted glass vase from the picnic table, eased it down over the moth, and slipped a napkin under to seal him in. This was our living centerpiece now, a gem that few Americans and fewer Irishmen would ever see. In only six hours Father would be here to marvel at it with me, with his signature delight in all the workings and wonders of the Creator.

The moth under glass fanned its wings in slow trusting gentle strokes, waving its antennae. Its fresh coloring, clear markings, and perfect wing condition suggested that he’d just emerged from his cocoon, perhaps that very morning. For a person carrying around an individual portion of inner darkness, it was very moving to sit transported by such amazing beauty, to know how fleeting and rare this experience was. I knew that Cecropias live for only a few days, and that this moth had one mission in life: to fly and fly and find a moth like him, and spend the day with its own mate so that one or other of them could lay some eggs before they both died.

Then it dawned on me. For a creature with three days to live, half a day lost was a disaster. Cecropias did not grow on every tree. In these hours of fluted glass captivity, what if this moth’s mate was passing by and the two of them missed each other and just kept searching and searching for the rest of their small lives?

That night, Father (may he rest in peace) got a fluted glass vase near his plate, and a story with his dinner of the moth that got away.

That Cecropia was long gone by then. He floated over the roof on his way to the sky.