On Gossamer Wings

It crept up on me, quite literally: a furry little thing already halfway up my naked thigh. I screeched and jumped, as for a terrifying second it looked suspiciously like a centipede, though plumper and slower on fourteen squirmy legs. I knew this because the first thing I reached for, after regaining my composure, was a cartoonishly large toy magnifying glass. Here was a rare backyard activity that desperate urban moms could neither plan nor pay for — true in regular times but particularly so this past year of lockdowns — and I wasn’t about to miss it.

“A caterpillar!” I proclaimed to my toddler, as she teetered on the brink of meltdown, just as the rest of us have been lately. “A real-life Very Hungry Caterpillar!” I resorted to the Eric Carle reference because I couldn’t remember when I’d last seen a caterpillar in real life, let alone found one crawling up my leg. For that, I’d have to have nothing better to do than sit in the dirt and stay there long...