Charlotte

Yellow, plastic “crime-scene” tape is anchored from a terracotta flower pot on the ground to a clothesline with a wooden pin on the other side of the morning glory fence I share with my neighbor, Betsy. She knows about it. She put it there.

 

While watering my garden one morning this week, I heard a keening cry. It was Betsy. I stopped what I was doing to see what was wrong. “I accidentally walked into the web. I forgot it was there. I’ve ruined it. Charlotte. . .” “What would Wilbur say?” I asked, referring to the children’s book, Charlotte’s Web, the story of a spider with a humble pig for a friend. At first, Wilbur thinks humble means "close to the ground." After talking with Charlotte, he knows it means "teachable." Everything in my experience is an expression of spirit, the one universe, and is speaking to me. Do I listen? Am I teachable?

Lamenting the damage she inadvertently caused, Betsy genuinely felt bad. As the daughter of a biologist and a geologist who writes and illustrates children’s books, many about animals and insects, Betsy has an innate affinity for the natural world. She keeps a terracotta pot saucer filled with water beneath a bush to attract toads to her yard. She makes sure the bird bath is full so they have a place to bathe. Every monsoon season on her morning walk, she rescues as many as 150 baby frogs washed into the gutter by the first rain, picking them up one at a time and returning them to the adjacent field in a nature preserve.

 

“I put up the tape to remind myself the web is there,” she says. I know she needs consolation. “It’s okay, Betsy. She’ll just repair the web. Spiders know how. They do it all the time – every time an insect ventures into the web for dinner. They have everything they need within themselves to do it, just like you with your painting and writing.” “I wish I could capture my dinner,” she muses, “but I don’t have silk in me. This would be a good topic for your blog.”

 

“What kind of spider is it?” I ask. “I think it’s a New Mexico Orb Weaver,” Betsy replies, “I looked it up.” The spider has beautiful red and white markings and makes a large, spiral, wheel-shaped web. I’m hoping it will catch some of the pesky flies plaguing us. Today, around noon, I stopped by for an up-close-and-personal look at the spider, the web and the crime-scene tape, but the spider wasn’t home. Later, I saw her on the web again. Wikipedia explains most orb weavers tend to be active during the evening hours. They hide during the day. Toward evening, the spider will consume the old web, rest for approximately an hour, then spin a new web in the same general location. I was gratified to learn some are semi-social and live in communal webs which have been cut out of trees or bushes in Mexico and used for living fly paper.

 

Symbolically, to Native Americans, spider is grandmother, the link to past and future. Unlike insects, spiders have two body sections instead of three, giving them a figure-eight appearance, when horizontal, the sign of infinity, representing the wheel of life flowing from one circle to the next. In his book Animal Speak, Ted Andrews provides an extraordinarily rich symbolic description of what it means if a spider has come into your life or is your totem. It is powerfully appropriate for Betsy and me and perhaps for you too.

 

“Spider teaches you to maintain a balance – between past and future, physical and spiritual, male and female. Spider teaches you that everything you now do is weaving what you will encounter in the future.” Andrews mentions that the spiral shape of the web is the traditional form of creativity and development. “We are the keepers and the writers of our own destiny, weaving it like a web by our thoughts, feelings, and actions."

 

The spider is considered the teacher of language and the magic of writing because a primordial alphabet was formed by the geometric patterns and angles found within spider’s web, according to Andrews. Most of their movement occurs  in the dark, often in inaccessible areas. “Weave your creative threads in the dark (It’s 1:00 a.m. as I write this) and then when the sun hits them, they will glisten with intricate beauty.” Andrews presents a series of important questions to contemplate if spider has come into your life:

• Are you not weaving your dreams and imaginings into reality?
• Are you not using your creative opportunities?
• Are you feeling closed in or stuck as if in a web?
• Do you need to pay attention to your balance and where you are walking in life?
• Are others out of balance around you?
• Do you need to write?
• Are you inspired to write or draw and not following through?

"Spider can teach how to use the written language with power and creativity so your words weave a web around those who would read them,” Andrews says. I saw a toad in my garden this evening for the first time in a long time and a hummingbird earlier today. Dare I look them up? I have enough to think about now. I’m trusting you do too.