Not long after we moved into our home, we added a second bathroom downstairs and chose a small octagon window for that room. I placed a candlelight in the window to give the room some warm character. It turns out I wasn’t the only one who liked the character of the window.
An orb-weaver spider quickly took up residence and her large wheel-shaped web encompassed the window. My once-charming window looked like it was continually decorated for Halloween. I was not impressed, but my husband and the kids loved her and her web. I would often find them staring out the high window inspecting her latest creations.
Since she was not the warm charm I was looking for, a battle ensued. I was constantly heading outside with the broom to sweep her and her web away. She was much more tenacious than I, and by the next evening she would be at work weaving a new web.
She won the battle and gone are the days of me running out to sweep her away. In the summer we watch her by the candlelight as she weaves and repairs, making her web ready for its nightly catch. Watching her weave is a sight to behold, she weaves with deep purpose and executed perfection.
I must admit the placing of her web is brilliant. The candlelight calls to her prey and they fly in as if hypnotized by the light. She waits, glistening in the candlelight, and then gathers her food, preparing for what she is called to do, bring forth life.
As I have been making a home here, so has she. Twenty-five generations of her, since her life span is only one year, and twenty-five years of me. In the spring she mates and by late summer she is laying her eggs in a mass of golden silk. She never sees those babies, for she will die soon after laying her eggs. Life can be like that, we don’t always see the fruit of our labor.
In early autumn the baby orb weavers will burst from her carefully woven sack, we are lucky if we see one or two. They spin little parachutes and jump into the wind that will carry them to the place they will call home, where they will weave their webs.
For all these years she and I have been doing what we were called to do, making homes and weaving lives side by side. We have had summer seasons of building and repairing, the making of a place where new life was nurtured. We have had seasons of autumn, when the fallen leaves blow and our children fly away on the wind. This house, this window, sits quiet waiting for the first snow.
A new hope will rise, as spring awaits the next generation. New life will begin again.
DeVonne White lives in rural Pennsylvania, where the birds sing and the deer pay daily visits. She works in insurance by day, and enjoys writing poetry and short essay by night.