Shine A Light On Me

One night in the garage I noticed something watching me. Resting on top of some containers a moth lay still. I froze and stared at the black speckled patterns. A jolt went through me, wondering how long it had been there. It was a large moth, white with black spots. In my entire life in Houston, in that house, I had never seen this type of moth before. Then again, maybe I never paid any attention. It was a leopard moth, a new strange visitor. With little interaction or experience with bugs, I felt the anxiety that comes with discovering one. Looking at its wings and anticipating some sort of unexpected flight, I made sure to keep my distance. 

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In my youth, my mom and I went through a phase of saving monarch butterfly caterpillars from the birds, by housing them inside until they completed their transformation. Watching them change from a tiny worm, into something of a tomb and then emerge as a completely different creature that could fly, was quite miraculous. The experience with those butterflies forever changed the way that I viewed neon green caterpillars. They were no longer creepy little worms.

Around the age of twenty, while waiting for a lecture to begin at U of H, sitting in my cramped chair, a tiny caterpillar fell from my hair onto my notebook. The surprise startled me but then I quickly remembered all the butterflies, all those little worms that grew. So I spent the entire class babysitting an 1/8th of an inch, green creature, studying it in amazement at how ridiculously small it was. After class, I gently took it to a leaf outside and wished it well. 

What if I hadn’t had those experiences with the monarchs? What if I had never known what was capable of that tiny worm, that it was harmless to me? That it had traveled so far and was going through such a complicated process? What if I never knew what it would eventually become? Would I have tossed it aside? Would I have crushed it out of fear and disgust; brushed it off without a second thought? 

In the garage, I felt a familiar nervousness at the sight of the moth because I didn’t know anything about it. I knew a little about butterflies, but moths were a little more mysterious to me. I knew they were the things that hung around at night, dancing around any light they could find. I didn’t know how long this moth had been there, where it came from or what it was even doing. I leaned forward to inspect it and then moved back. Uncertain of the thing, I left and hoped it would resolve itself on its own.

The next day I came back to the garage to take out the trash, where the moth remained. Something inside me sank. I knew it was dead. I felt a surprising amount of sadness at that fact. There had been no life in it when I first discovered it. Something about that thought made me even sadder. This moth had come there to die, its last moments sitting with no ability to hide. I left it alone and avoided its presence. 

Months later, returning home to Oklahoma I continued to think of that moth. I found myself looking for images and information about leopard moths. I started to become fascinated by it. Frustrated, I wished that I had kept it. Suddenly it felt like a missed opportunity. I should have recognized how incredible it was instead of being afraid. 

At home, I began drawing and painting pictures of them. I began to think of all the glory butterflies get, their brighter colors fluttering in sunshine and associated with joy. Moths come out at night, rarely seen, and are typically much more muted in color. I had never paid much attention to them at all in my youth until that night, until seeing that spotted one. All these years later, I still think of how beautiful it was. It was not weird or scary, or any of the things my brain had first thought out of fear. That moth in my garage showed me its final transformation but I didn’t understand. It would be a decade before I saw one like it again. They always show up in March.