Web

On September 2, 1975, I was 11-years-old and in the worst pain of my short life. It was a profound pain, so profound, in fact, that even though it wasn’t physical in the purest sense, it made its way into my bones, my veins, the hairs on my arms and legs. I was reeling, hurting, spinning around into and out of myself. One minute I sat in a chair disbelieving, the whole world having turned into a mockery of itself, the next, fighting a nausea that rose whenever I remembered that I was trapped in this new reality.

My father had died that morning and to this day the symbol of my grief is a spider web.

The web had been built among the maze of twigs and leaves that made up the hedges lining the side of our corner house. I have revisited that web over and over again, because every time I ponder the day of my father’s death, the web is an illustration that comes with it.

A spider web is surprisingly robust. As gauzy and ineffectual as it may look, once you touch it, it does not want to you let go; you can spend minutes trying to fling it off your hands, unsticking it from the grooves between your fingers. I have never liked spiders, their thin legs and puffed bodies, their lairs, have always scared me. But this day, this nightmare, has been indelibly marked by a web, one that has, for some reason, become utterly beautiful to me.

My Papa and I had gone out for a walk that morning. The early sky had just turned the corner to light, the late summer air was crisp, and dew cast its sparkle on everything that had caught it and allowed it to rest until its eventual evaporation in the sun and heat. But the world was gray, the green leaves of the hedges in stark contrast, and as we came toward them, my eye caught sight of the web.

It stretched out among several tiny branches. The fibers looped and tangled within and around themselves and I knew that the brilliant animal that had assembled this structure had done so with resolve, a plan. I stopped in front of it and my Papa began to talk to me about the cycle of life. I knew that he was not comfortable with me, know now that no one could have been comfortable with me. How do you stand easily in the atmosphere of a girl who has just lost a person enormous in her life? Is there a possibility of passing through the gate, of helping her to feel like there is a way to plow through? I doubt it. The spider web glistened.

It reminds me of diamonds, that web. There were droplets of water all over it, perfectly spaced as though they were placed there by a tiny, calculating hand, so small that a pinprick would not have been able to dismantle them. The drops could have been the tears of the prey, the pain of a miniscule heart breaking at its own demise. The shimmer from the web was remarkable, though there was no sun that was causing it to reflect, nothing really, for the drops to grab on to. It was a miracle, a favor to me.

My mother had come in to tell me a short while before. I was supposed to start middle school that day, had been having trouble sleeping anyway. When the phone rang in the dark early morning and my mother and grandfather left the house, they had thought that I was asleep. I had heard my mom’s murmured words through the bedroom door, heard the outside door close and lock, the car start. My heart still beat, my breaths came like always, but somewhere, something else had stopped.

As we stood outside the house in front of the hedges, I examined the still web, the silken and glossy strands. It would be easy to just glide over them, there were no hitches to catch one up; the thoughtful spider had smoothed the fibers down as she went. I had seen spiders spin webs before, had seen them come down from the ceiling hanging by fine, fine threads. No effort at all, it seemed to take the spider. Spinning was an endeavor so plainly natural, as inborn as swallowing. Nothing I could do now was that easy, nothing would ever be that easy again. I was mired in gloom.

My father has been gone from this earth for over 30 years. I have such vivid memories of him, pictures in my mind that are as sharp as they were all those years ago when they were first formed. The spider web is kin to that time of my life. A life had passed beyond me and a fortress stood before me in the bushes. Somehow they are related, they have both taught me a lesson.