Last December, in the quiet week between Christmas and January, I walked a few blocks to my office and put away the holiday decorations for another year. I knew the place would be empty on that weekend morning, which meant I could work without much fuss. Taking down Christmas stuff, like unpacking a suitcase or cleaning up after a party, is best done quickly so that life can move on.
My first chore was unplugging the lights on our outdoor tree, a pond cypress that our office staff had planted a few years ago. I’ve written about our pond cypress before. They’re a popular species in Louisiana because they stand up well to wind and drought. We had gathered outside and tucked one in the ground after the pandemic as a memorial to the lives claimed by the tragedy.
A tough little tree seemed like a fitting reminder of what resilience can be.
While unlooping a strand of lights from the cypress, I noticed a big spider web among the branches. The day was warm and gray, and the neighborhood was wreathed in fog. Like a sail catching the wind, the web had gathered the dampness of the air, and the spider silk shimmered with droplets of dew. Glazed with sunlight, it hung from the tree like a small constellation, and the perfection of it consoled me with the thought that though Christmas was over, joy wasn’t something I had to put away with the baubles of Yuletide.
If my wife had been with me, she probably would have spied the spider web in the pond cypress before I did. She’s an expert web spotter, often pointing them out during breakfast on our patio.
When she called one to my attention the other day, all I could see was an empty place within the shrubbery. After I moved closer to my wife, the web revealed itself like a spirit parting a veil. A fresh angle of light had allowed me to grasp what had, seconds ago, been invisible. I suppose all beauty is like that.
It’s not enough for it to be present; you have to be prepared to see it.
E.B. White, my favorite writer, touched on that truth in “Charlotte’s Web,” his celebrated children’s story in which a spider works words of inspiration into her web as a way to save a pig’s life. When Dr. Dorian, a local physician, is asked to explain how a spider can weave words, he shrugs, suggesting that any spider’s web is a brilliant mystery.
“A young spider knows how to spin a web without any instructions from anybody,” he says. “Don’t you regard that as a miracle?”
I recently mailed a copy of “Charlotte’s Web” to Cora, my goddaughter Danika’s new baby. I’d like her to know what I’m trying to remember — that wonder lives in any season, if only we take the time to look.
Email Danny Heitman at [email protected].
