SPIDER WEBS

Hundreds of shimmering strands hung stretched between the slats of my back door stairs. Gresham stood with a juicy pear dripping in his right hand and his left wrapped around my forefinger. He inhaled deeply, his back arching to take as much air into his three-foot trunk as possible. He drew his lips into a tight circle and blew into the spider web with all his might.

"Try again," I chided.

He blasted the web with another gust of his warm air, this time his face turning red and his eyes crossing at the end.

"Why won't it break," I asked.

"That's strong," he answered between pants, and collapsed to his bottom on the stoop.

"But spider webs are tiny, Gresham and you're so big." I sat beside him.

He proudly smiled opened-mouthed, a large bite of pear half mashed and jiggling on his tongue. He sat up straight, adding six inches to his stature, and balled his pearless hand into a fist while bending his arm at the elbow to show off his four year-old mounds of manliness. "I'm big," he garbled.

"I know," I agreed, "but that little bitty spider web is stronger huh?"

He slumped back down into a curvy lump, eyed the dainty web again and bit another chunk from his pear.

"What else is tiny but very strong," I wondered out loud.

"ANTS!" he blurted. "Ants are so so SO strong!"

"Yea, they are. So so SO strong."

As we sat together cooling in the afternoon cloud cover and serenaded by crickets and the hum of the busy street just over the fence, my mind wandered. I thought about tiny molecules of air and slight curves in wings giving lift to tons of metal and dozens of passengers. I thought of small black dots on paper singing tears and smiles onto the faces of millions. I thought of a hundred different small things accomplishing more than it seems they should.

And then Gresham broke our silence. He threw his pear core into the yard, wrapped his arms around my waist and grunted and squeezed and writhed. "I can lift...you...Daddy," he strained.

I lifted myself slowly, only an inch or two, and his eyes widened, amazed at his own strength.

"I did it!"

Tonight, hours later I'm still thinking about Gresham's super powers. I have a lot on my mind lately. I have some fears, some obstacles ahead that seem insurmountable, some weights I don't think can be lifted I guess. My brain is spitting and spinning constantly. I don't sleep well. I'm excited and anxious and creative and stuck all at the same time all the time. My head is full of activity. And I've just added this moment with Gresham, his feats of strength, to the hopper.

I don't have some clever closing paragraph, some meaningful metaphor to unveil here. You can write your own. I don't know exactly what kind of wisdom Gresham and the spider web have to offer me. But there are moments, you know, when things slow down and something greater comes into focus. The worries and hurries and hurdles and objections of life fade into the background and you're suddenly keenly aware that Something in the right now is speaking. Or trying to. And if you only knew the language you'd solve a million riddles.

That was juicy hands gripping my waist and spider web swaying in the breeze made by a four year-old today. Something spoke to me. If only I knew what It said.

For now it's enough just to know It talks.