||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS by JACKIE BATES |||
Never mind the cold rain after such a long dry spell, is Fall really upon us? Apparently so, as the sure sign is here. In my bathtub. If you waded through my bio attached to this column, you can see I’ve moved a lot. My oldest child lived in at least four states before he was even born. Not traveled through, with a home somewhere else. There wasn’t a somewhere else, just where we were living for a brief time. He was finally born in Detroit, which meant when college applications required his birthplace, he wrote in ‘Motown, USA’ and it was never questioned, probably because actual human eyes saw the applications first. Today a digital algorithm would have stopped the application in its tracks and likely rejected his applications. (His prenatal other resident states were New York, North Carolina, and New Hampshire. I keep thinking there was one other, but I can’t remember which one it could have been. He doesn’t recall either.)
In any case, when Fall rolled around in any of those states (though Michigan was the only one where Fall actually did roll around that year, not to mention all the Falls that rolled around later in my life in even more states, this particular sign of approaching Fall only occurred when I moved to Orcas Island in the Fall of 1990, and bought a little house at Obstruction Pass.)
I moved in on Halloween that year, having spent the earlier months in a tiny cabin in the woods that had no water, thus no bathtub, no spiders. (No electricity or phone either, but that’s not part of this story.) On my first morning in my new house, there was a large house spider in the corner of my bathtub. An impressively big spider.
I’m not afraid of spiders. In fact, I rather like them. A lot more than I like some of the crawling and flying critters. And yes, I’m aware that some spiders are not benign, and I’m not as fond of those. (The only one of the dangerous spiders I have known personally is the Black Widow, which were common where I grew up in North Carolina. They stayed outdoors, in my limited experience, minding their own spider business as long as we minded ours, in the house, which I was more than willing to do.)
But back to Orcas Island: This Tuesday morning, I pulled back the plastic shower curtain, and there in the corner of the bathtub was the enormous spider, about two inches in diameter. A sure sign Fall is coming, at least here in my house on Orcas Island.
I took a pix of the spider, which I’ve been unable to send to Lin. I don’t know why, except I am basically tech-less, even more today than usual. If you don’t like spiders, you are probably grateful for my failure.
Now back to my story: So when I saw the spider, I gently, with a tissue, picked up the spider, carefully held it loosely, and carried it to the sliding door to my deck, so I could drop it to the grass where, I assume it could get back to spider business and I could get back to my shower. That was when I noticed I was completely naked (as one is when approaching a nice hot shower) and I wasn’t going to be able to dress, or even wrap myself in a towel one-handed. If I put the tissue with the spider down, then it would still be in my house, and perhaps not so willing to be captured again. Of course I could have put it in the sink, but I was shivering, which makes my brain inert.
My neighbors are nice and I think we have good relationships. I wouldn’t want to scare them so early in the day. Still, I couldn’t see any way out other than moving quickly, which is what I did without incident, or at least without screams. I didn’t see anyone and assume no one’s morning was ruined by a glimpse of geriatric streaking.
So that would be the end of the story, except the next day, in the same corner of the bathtub, there was another spider of the same type and size. How do they get in my house anyway? And was it the same one? (No nudity this time. I’m a veteran.)
So for more than 30 years, the first sign that Fall is imminent, is when the spiders come inside to live with me, specifically in the bathtub and kitchen sink.
I found a few ripe blackberries this morning, but the spiders were first. And now I hear the rain, which is the third sign. It must be true. Fall approaches.
