☀️Cater-mothering and Summer Mothering
...a very Hungry Caterpillar Named Morris and other things we love this summer
We have a new baby! Her name is Morris.
Yes, she is a caterpillar. And yes I’m obsessed.
She is adopted. I mean, obvi. But what I mean is she didn’t come into our lives the way I expected a caterpillar would. In the world of parenting caterpillars, the traditional way of welcoming your baby home is actually more like them finding you. In the light of the moon a little egg lays on a leaf in the milkweed you have planted in your yard, you bring that caterpillar egg and it’s favorite milkweed inside, no car seat check required, and POP, out of the egg comes that tiny but very hungry caterpillar of which you are the proud mother.
I have longed to be a caterpillar mother for years. (oh let’s call it cater-mother from now on! That’s fun. Maybe I should print sweatshirts.) The miracle and magic of transformation is my jam. But I didn’t want to just be any cater-mother. I wanted to be a natural cater-mother. I wanted to be the one to nurture that beautiful spirit into the world and witness it with my own eyes. I am not about to order my caterpillars from Jeff Bezos! No thank you.
So to find my caterpillar, I planted a butterfly garden and scattered milkweed seeds. I checked under every leaf I passed, even the ones in other people’s yards. I hunted for the tiny little eggs that had chosen me to be his forever cater-mother. And yet, nothing. I took this personally, and with some guilt. Was this my penance? I once took a chrysalis from my parents yard only to kill it in its final butterfly birth because its wings couldn’t expand. Has that one moment forever marked me as a not-fit-cater-mother?!?
Moms will find any reason to feel guilty.
Last week I complained about this to a neighbor and she said, rather insensitively if you ask me, “Oh goodness, we have at least 15 little caterpillars at the moment! Take one of ours!” I thought about saying no on principle. That wasn’t how this was supposed to work. If I was meant to experience the miracle of transformation, wasn’t I suppose to find the caterpillar egg myself, from my own garden?
But my desire to cater-mother won out. I brought Morris (she would receive her name the next morning by her cater-brothers and cater-sister) home that night, resting on a leaf inside a mason jar, tucked into my bike trailer like she was one of my own. Because now she was. I was in love.
You laugh about the cater-mother part (I can hear you) but let me just tell you, the first few days of parenting a baby caterpillar is not unlike having a newborn. I checked on her all the time, inching my nose as close as I could to watch for signs of life. I worried, leaving her alone in the kitchen while I slept upstairs, imagining scary scenarios like falling off the leaf and into the vase of water or crawling onto the floor and then getting stepped on by toddler feet. Sometimes when she was still and the kids were being exceptionally loud in her presence, I flinched, worried she would startle. Also, I’ll just tell you Eric Carle nailed one thing in his caterpillar book but left off a very essential part of the story. Caterpillars are indeed VERY hungry. Boy could she eat. But what is not mentioned in the book is the poop. SO MUCH POOP! Again, newborn stage all over again.
But my biggest worry of all was letting her down. I’d never done this before. What if the milkweed wasn’t fresh enough? What if she wasn’t getting enough sunlight or fresh air? How would she know when it was time? What if I *gasp* killed her again?
“I think she might not be happy,” I said to Caroline one morning, the child who most shared in my investment of this life. I said “happy” because I couldn’t bring myself to speak of a greater grief. “Oh no,” was all she said with a somber tone, because I think she knew just what I meant to say but couldn’t. After days of going through leaf after leaf, Morris was suddenly very still. I had moved her to a new milkweed plant thinking the other one was no longer interesting to her, but she wasn’t eating anymore. She just laid under the leaf, barely moving.
“The book says we have to watch for her to go into a J shape,” she said to me, because of course she had read the books, not I. For as much as I worried as a cater-mother, I was still never very good about reading up on proper care. Everyone knows parenting books will only make you feel like a bad mom.
Maybe it was self preservation, but I think that’s when I started to give up hope. I needed to distance myself. I recognized then how little control I had over this life. I couldn’t wrap her into a chrysalis myself. If this caterpillar was meant to live its next life as a butterfly, I was going to let God and science do their thing.
That’s why it felt like a miracle. That’s why when suddenly in the middle of an ordinary Wednesday while I putzed around the kitchen clearing breakfast dishes and getting butter out to make cookies, while someone yelled at their brother and I paused to take a deep breath so I wouldn’t join them too, while our morning went on all its quotidian ways and Morris began to change anyway, I could not believe what I was seeing.
The once still caterpillar was twitching and twerking, so violently I thought for sure she would fall off of the tiny web barely connecting her bottom to the underside of the leaf. Right before our eyes, in a matter of only a minutes, her caterpillar skin shed upwards revealing the lime green shell of a chrysalis. And naturally I caught it all on film like the doting cater-mother I always knew I would be.
It was just as it was supposed to happen, exactly like the books described, as science, and God, designed her to be. But to witness this change, in the middle of my messy kitchen and my ordinary life, felt like nothing more than a miracle.
If you watch the video you’ll hear me gasping and woahing and kind of losing my mind-ing. But what I really was thinking was “I want more of this in my life.” I want to be amazed on a Wednesday morning. I want to see the world happening just as it is and still be in awe. I want to remember that I don’t have to hunt for a miracle. I don’t have to wait for it or be worthy of it. Sometimes miracles are given to us in small containers kept on our messy kitchen counter.
We wait now, for the next stage of Morris’ life. I don’t know what to expect of her, if she will be different from the other one, if her wings will be strong enough to carry her with the wind. I realize, though, I’m not worried. I’ve already witnessed the miracle. The rest will just be another surprise.
I hope you are surprised by miracles, too, this summer, in the tiniest most normal ways. Those are the best kind.
Cheers!
Rachel
Well hello there summer!
(PS Yes I know I’ve already used Schitt’s Creek GIFs but there are just too many not to use them again, so here we are.)
We’re in the second week of summer which is my glory week. The first week is a real shit show, I’ll just be honest. It’s like everyone and their backpacks are dumped upside onto my living room floor and we’re trying to sift through all of it to understand how to live. I mean, literally that’s how we began the first week of summer, with my kids backpacks and all of their very special “please laminate and frame this worksheet I did and also do you see this pencil I got from my best friend with the rainbows on it? And yes of course I want that dried up glue stick. Are you a monster?”
While we worked through those feelings, we took 10 hours to get out of the house, and forgot how to put on sunscreen. We argued and whined and tried to remember what it was like to be on top of each other all the time (HOW WE DID IT FOR ELEVEN MONTHS I’LL NEVER UNDERSTAND.)
And then, as it always happens, by the second week, things settled down. The backpacks and all their content found a home (cough*garbage*cough). We remembered we do actually like each other. And we really do love summer and all its freedom.
And so while I’m sitting in the good place of summer, I want to bring you what is working for us so far with this June letter.
Some things I’m wearing:
This will forever be remembered as the summer I discovered the joys of bike shorts and Tevas.
First off, it’s been 227,000% humidity (check my math on that one but I think I’m pretty close) and my thighs will always and forever touch. Bike shorts solve all of those problems. I would link the ones I have but I shamefully purchased them from Amazon when I was too lazy to hunt down the ones from Target (as if shopping there is any better?) All I can say is find the ones with pockets and high waist.
And Teva’s? Well, this is where I admit I grew up thinking anything Teva/Chaco was very nerdy. And in a dramatic twist, that is actually now who I am. So I got these and hardly ever take them off. Also it means I am fully embracing my bike to beach lifestyle. My 17 year old self is V jealous. I love this for me.
Some things I’m eating:
It’s salad season right now in the CSA. I can get very bored with salads. But if I can trick myself into imagining it as a cooked meal with greens around it, I like it much better. Taco salad is a perfect example of that. No recipe required. But we also love lettuce wraps and these vegan ones were so good, even the six year old who hates food sort of ate one and said it was “good, mom.” I perished at the table.
Then one night I remembered a salad we had in an adorable cafe in Canterbury England decades ago made with crispy chicken, fresh mozzarella, avocado, tomato, and a phenomenal pesto meets buttermilk dressing situation. And I pulled out the bag of our favorite Costco chicken nuggets which tricked the kids into thinking I was such a fun mom to serve them at dinner, but also brilliant because CHICKEN NUGGETS CAN BE A MEAL FOR EVERYONE!
These tacos are just so good in the summer. We tried it with quick sautéed shrimp spiced with smoky paprika and it was fantastic.
This pasta salad is the perfect side with anything grilled, like this chicken, but it was also fantastic with some fresh garden arugula mixed in.
Some things keeping us cool:
I mentioned I love the freedom of summer, and I do very much. But I also need milestones in my day, week, and months to give that freedom some boundaries. I started writing a novel to describe the different ways this works for us, but then I discovered it should be its own blog post. But I’ll just say one touchpoint for us is Cold Treat Thursday (we tried to come up with a better alliteration and came up short. Taking recommendations if you have one.) I learned this trick from Kelsey Wharton on The Girl Next Door podcast. Once a week we go to a different place for a fun cold treat. Last week Elliott picked fancy milkshakes. This week Caroline picked Frozen Yogurt Bar. I love that we have something to look forward to each week, and it keeps us exploring different places in our city, which is one of my favorite things to do.
But we don’t keep the cold treats limited to one day. I have fully embraced the daily popsicle. And my embrace I mean I finally stopped buying the expensive healthy kind. I went all in on the Freeze Pops. This is something I NEVER had as a kid. And I am so good being that kind of mom. I put spinach in their smoothies. Something has to balance out that health. And to make it even easier, I took a tip from The Lazy Genius podcast and attached scissors to our outdoor freezer and a trash can next to it so they can help themselves. It’s the perfect way to transition from hot summer morning to calm and cool afternoon. High Fructose Corn Syrup be damned.
Also, this feels too simple, and not at all something I can link to, but there is a ministry in the afternoon shower. It keeps me cool through the afternoon in our air conditioner less home and feels like the reset I need after a busy morning.
Some things I’m sipping on:
Summer is the season for lazy drinking, which for me means having something a quick pour away from a cocktail, that isn’t just a boring beer or wine (no judgements, or maybe just a little.)
I love this quick margarita (perfect with the tacos mentioned above!) Please take note of the fancy garnish. Also I made up this sangria for a last minute trip to the beach, which was perfect to entice friends to meet me with their favorite no-conspicuous drinking vessel, making a party of an otherwise random Sunday night which is exactly the vibe I want for the rest of the summer! The sangria is still sitting in my fridge making cocktail night faster than slip n’ slide. Ooh, now I want to make a drink called the Sip ‘N Slide!!
Some things I’m reading:
My content consumption has been low lately, so not a lot to share here. But I’m headed into a bunch of vacations so I anticipate an uptick. This seasonal flow is very ok with me.
I did finish The Book of Longings which was so, so, so good. In fact, when I finished Writers and Lovers last month I wanted to find another book that celebrated the creative lifestyle. The Book of Longings happened to show up in my library holds next, and little did I know it too touched on the internal desire to live a creative life. Writing + Jesus + Women realizing their truest potential. LOVE IT ALL!!
Also I literally just finished reading this newsletter about the Nap Dress from Anne Helen Petersen and it was the content I didn’t know I needed. Here’s a teaser of a quote: “The primary connection is the familial one; the kid’s dresses effectively create an echo of the self, even when one’s understanding of what that self is (Am I mom? An employee? A wife? A respected member of society? Of worth? What do I actually value?) becomes unstable. They don’t say fuck it. They say maybe this will finally make it work. Millennials, after all, don’t give up. They try harder.”
Also one procrastinating morning I dove deep into this piece on Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” album and I’m in love. I need this to be my next vinyl purchase.
Some things I wrote:
Usually when I’m not reading, I am writing. There were longer form pieces without homes yet that took my attention. But here are a few other things.
On Learning, and telling, our Stories
On Being in the In-between (a theme I write about a lot, and still have more to say, probably always will.)
There must be so many more things I could write about. The thing is, I miss blogging. I’m in a weird space with social media lately (I know, crazy and highly unusual, right?!) I want to share but engagement is overwhelming me. Blah Blah Blah. This is nothing you haven’t heard or felt. I guess what I’m saying is I think I need a break.
But I want to share all the big and little things and blogging is my favorite way to do that. Anyway, we’re headed into the mountains for a week and I can NOT WAIT (which is saying a lot to be excited to sleep on the ground for a week and spend 40 hours in a car with my children and all of our stinky possessions.) But it also might be a good chance to give me a longer pause in the loud internet world and stay in the quieter space of the blog. Find me there, will you?
Also, speaking of blogging, if you have a blog or love another blog, will you send me the link? I want to bring back the days of blog feeder scrolling this summer.
I have a car to pack for a week of camping so I’m signing off here! I’ll leave you with the words of Mary Oliver I’m taking into the woods with me. To the real work of looking and listening and discovering miracles, friends…
“I am touching a few leaves.
I am noticing the way the yellow butterflies
move together, in a twinkling cloud, over the field.
And I ma thinking: maybe just looking and listening
is the real work.
Maybe the world, without us, is the real poem.”
— “From the Book of Time” by Mary Oliver