Spiderling

by Beverly Faxon

After naptime, some banana and waffle, and two consecutive readings of Spiders, my granddaughter, the dogs, and I went out to the orchard bordering the grassy field. It was a typical Northwest afternoon—sunshine and blue skies to the west where ferries slide between the San Juan Islands, and dark gray clouds pushed up against the Cascade Mountains in the east. Anything might happen—chilling rain or a burst of shirtsleeve sunshine. For the moment, the wind was whipping, and I pulled my light wool hat down over my granddaughter’s ears.

We had a mission. In our book, we read of baby spiders, that they are called spiderlings, a word so delightful that I emphasized it for her. She assured me, however, in a definitive three year-old way, that some spiders—“alternate” spiders, had not spiderlings, but litters of cubs. And more than loving spiderlings, I love how the vocabulary of nature is working into her being: litters and cubs, camouflage and predator. I love how she sees the folding petals of an Itoh peony budding and tells me it is a tulip, how she hears birdsong and tells me it is a chickadee. I love how her Lego horses rear up, wrestling each other with their forelegs, just like marmots do, she explains.

The day before, on the stump of what was once a pear tree, we found a mass of bright yellow spider cubs, each smaller than a pinhead. The spiders were still there on this afternoon, and my granddaughter crouched down, her nose just inches from the huddled bodies. Once in awhile, one slipped down a silky thread and then crawled back up. They seemed to be preparing for their spider act of ballooning—each floating off to find its own home in the world.

Every day, we study a different creature. We have our routine: we look for photos, search for interesting facts, watch a short video. At some point, a howling, or screeching, or scuffling animal argument was too intense, so now we watch on mute. But this child is not daunted by the concept of prey and predator. When she learned that the great horned owl eats rabbits, she insisted on seeing a picture of that dining, and looked with interest at the owl, bunny fur hanging from its beak.

We’ve studied elephants and wolves, kingfishers and loons, skunks and stick bugs.

Her friends grow exponentially. When we studied porcupines, she found one named Spike under the table, eating tater tots. The other morning, she asked me to stop naming the cows we see at the neighboring dairy—Betty, Spotty, Midnight. Perhaps every cow named is another one she feels she must invite into the car with us, and the backseat of her heart is filling up.

How many ways have we learned this: to name something is to begin to know it, to know it is to love it, and to love it is to want to care for it.

And here is what I know—much of what she is learning to love will disappear in her lifetime. Many of the animals we read about with such curiosity will never exist for her except in books, videos, and photos. Even her blue skies are in danger. We live where August and September, once the months we could count on to be clear and bright, are now the fire months, and we spend days inside, the sky yellow with smoke, the air as breathless as that in Beijing, the sun a watered-down disc, our eyes stinging.

Do I do her a disservice to teach her to love what is disappearing? Do I have any choice? Since she was two weeks old, I’ve carried her through doorways and said to her, “Let’s go see the world.” We can’t stop now. She is slipping down a silky thread into what awaits.