New as Moths

Ever since Thea was born, the air outside my front door blinks with hundreds of tiny moths.  In the right sunlight, their wings silhouette open and close like a colony of beating hearts hung from the tree branches.  Remy has a miniature net and whenever I can't find him in the house, I spy him through the screen door working silently with his net casting wildly through the air.  Sometimes he actually catches the flickering bugs and sometimes he just squishes them and smears their soft, brown dust across his pudgy hands. He doesn't yet know the difference between ending something and simply capturing it.

Gentle, little Thea Harper has been with us just a little over three weeks now, and I find myself already feeling nostalgic for the tiny, soft body she hasn't yet even begun to grow out of.   There is something magical in newness.  The kind of magic I thought I'd given up on when I was 25.  Not 25 for any particular reason, I just thought that I'd made up in my head the notion that the feeling really existed and that at 25, I'd finally grown up.

Today though, for a fleeting moment in particular, I was reminded that I was wrong to ever believe that life isn't full of quick, perfect moments, like the wings that spring open and closed before we can even stop to recognize what they are doing.  We were at a park, Remy was running through the grass and clover patches waving a stick in front of him and I was holding Thea who had just woken up.  She opened her eyes wide and slowly moved her rosebud lips into a little 'o'.  She spent a long time just looking up and after a time, I realized that the tree we were under, with its thousands of rustling leaves and lacy bits of sunshine coming through was just as new to her as she is new to me.  I thought to myself about how she is grasping the world, just a little bit at time, like the silent movement of moth wings, or the momentary snippets of sunlight through the leaves.  And though this world won't make sense to her for some time, there is no harm in letting its newness wrap itself around her.

I guess what really got to me this afternoon is the way these small things have always been around me, rustling in the wind or living out their short, moth lives, and I don't think I even noticed them until I saw tiny people grasping at them as if there was nothing else more important or magical in all the world.  So yes, there is beauty in newness, but that doesn't necessarily mean we have to obtain something new to take part in the magic that has been there all along.

Song: Featherstone by Paper Kites