This post is part of StoryADay May (https://storyaday.org/) #StoryADay #StoryADayMay @storyadaymay #freeshortstory
Cocoon
We thought the country would be a great place to raise kids. Downsides: The three we already had were old enough to resent the move and to be fish-out-of-water in a rural school where everybody had grown up together, and the one we had after the move was isolated back on our place and had nobody to play with and three disgruntled older brothers to set him bad examples.
Georgie was like a pet to them, taught to say things he didn’t know were naughty until his dad and I responded with wide eyes and gasps. They teased him when we dressed him like the little boy he was and they teased him when he tore the knees of his little jeans to look more like the big boys.
Our only hope for him was that the big’uns were at school all day and, gradually, at after-school activities, sports, and hanging out with friends most afternoons and some evenings. All of that came with its own set of hellishness for parents who care, and it was a relief when we could carve out some quiet times to explore the actual country with our little country boy.
One cool evening, Dan and I were sitting on the back porch watching the lightning bugs come up out of the grass when Georgie tumbled up the steps with one hand cupped around something dangling from his other hand.
“Look! A cocoon! What kind is it?”
It looked like it had been rolled in rosemary, and it was firmly attached to a seven-inch twig.
“I didn’t pick it,” he said. He said it directly to his father, so I knew Dan had been gearing up to tell him not to interfere with cocoons in the future. “I found it on the ground.”
“I don’t know what kind it is,” I said. “A butterfly? A moth?”
“We could look it up,” Dan said, “but maybe it would be more fun to wait and see.”
He went into the kitchen while Georgie and I admired the rough beauty of the thing, and came out with one of my glass canning jars, a lid ring, and a facial tissue. He held out the jar for Georgie to slide the twig and its burden inside.
“Now put the tissue over the top. Now screw on the lid ring.”
And there we had a cocoon house.
“Can I keep it in my room?”
After a look at me for approval, Dan said, “Of course. Keep checking it and see what it is when it comes out.”
Have you ever been a parent? Have you ever been a parent in a place where everywhere your half-grown children go is through miles of unlit back roads? Where everywhere is the back side of nowhere? Where it’s believable when they say mobile phone reception is spotty, and they might be in their friend’s parents’ farmhouse, or they might be in the barn, or behind the barn, or out in a field, or buried in a shallow grave until they choose to call you or come home?
You can’t keep them. You can’t not let them go. You can’t explain why you’re frightened. You can’t stop being afraid every time they walk out the door into a world fifty times as terrifying as the neighborhood you would have lived in if you hadn’t moved to the country.
But we still had Georgie, at least for a while. He was starting to want to go to sleep-overs with friends he met at church or at pre-school. At least we knew the parents. At least we knew the friends. At least we could drop him off and pick him up, or see him picked up by grown-ups and receive him back from them on schedule. Except when they were late. Or changed plans. Or got busy and had him dropped off by their oldest child, oh, God, almost still a child herself.
Days passed. Weeks passed. Georgie came to me crying because the big boys told him he had killed whatever was inside his cocoon by bringing it inside. I was afraid they were right, but I had to take a long walk to cool down, I was so unreasonably enraged at them for saying it to him.
Maybe he would lose interest.
He didn’t.
Then, one late morning, when we were alone in the house, Georgie came pelting down the stairs to me holding something glass. I opened my mouth to tell him not to run with glass when I saw what it was: the cocoon house.
“Look!” He shoved it up and I bent over. “It’s hatching!”
We sat on the steps and watched as it moved and heaved, just a bit, just in one spot, maybe where it was weakest? What would it be?
Something tiny came out. At first, I thought it was just one of the rosemary-like needles falling off, but then another one came, and another and another.
Georgie made a noise of fascinated disgust as the jar populated with tiny figures. So tiny. So thin. With waving appendages as fine as hair.
My eyes connected to my mind, and I recognized them in their miniature form. “They’re praying mantises!” They looked just like full-grown ones, but minuscule, perfect.
“What’ll we do with them,” Georgie asked, his revulsion gone, now that he knew what they were. “What’ll we do?”
“We’ll take them out to the garden,” I said, “and unscrew the lid and walk away. That’s all we can do.”
It was all we could do. Let them go. Let them find their own way. Hope for the best for them, with all the factors that were utterly out of our control.
For years afterward, we would see mantises here and there in the garden or on the porch planters, and we would tell each other it was one of Georgie’s and give it a name and ask after its family.
Dan would laugh and say, “You two! One’s as silly as the other!”
But, when Georgie followed his brothers, grown and gone, Dan did it, too. We did it together.
MY PROMPT FOR TODAY: This mantis made by a young’un at the farmers market and a true story.
MA
