Remembering My Size

There are six swallowtail caterpillars currently making their way through one of my larger patches of parsley. Hard at work, they may very well reduce the whole plant to nothing but stems by the end of this week. They are small but mighty. If the parsley is sufficient they'll crawl off and develop into butterflies. As butterflies they'll pollinate my flowers and keep the life cycle going.

I am currently sitting on the floor in a corner of a Barnes and Noble at Tyson's Corner Mall. I left the garden a few hours ago to bring my son to this unlikely locale for play practice. I searched the mall for an hour trying to find a spot where I could work and avoid the rain but not be too close to people, COVID after all. This corner is relatively quiet and aside from the wrappers and bits of flotsam and jetsam on the carpet around me, and one persistent fruit fly, it's not an entirely unpleasant spot in which to write.

In front of me an older couple huddles at a cafe table. They speak together in a language I do not know. The woman is consuming a thick book in English called "Algorithms for Dummies." What will she become when she finishes the last page?

To my right is the "Parenting" section of the store. There are so many books there, must be at least 400. I have observed a few people scanning titles and pulling them into hopeful stacks on their arms. What might I have been as a parent if I had consumed even one these books?

The window beside me looks out on 9 lanes of traffic. Cars speed past, too many to count, and I marvel at the fact each holds at least one person. Perhaps some who understand algorithms. Perhaps some who understand parenting. They each travel from one place to another and I wonder if the people inside change in any small way during the journey.

I began the day with my first COVID test, a requirement for work. Though millions of people have been doing this for months, my first test felt singular, personal. I have no reason to believe I have the virus, but seated with a nurse holding my head still so she could forcibly swab my nostrils, I felt a pang of fear that perhaps it would find me. Strange then to come to this mall where that twinge of fear is thrown into context amid a sea of masked humanity. Each and all of us vulnerable to the whims of COVID, indeed, the whims of the world.

Will learning the algorithms save us? Will better parents fix the future?

Perhaps.

I like to think there are heroes amid the throngs of humanity sipping bubble tea and shopping to distraction, or riding in the million cars that pass this window. But I am also comforted by the notion none of us are singular.

We're all simply caterpillars making our way through whatever feeds us. Trying to become our own version of a butterfly. Pollinating what flowers we can. Keeping the cycle going.