Abigail Thomas

NOT BUGS, NOT AGAIN

The only time I feel like myself is when I’m writing. The only time I am invulnerable. Otherwise I am a sitting duck, filled with anxiety about one thing or another, one loved one or another, the planet itself. But how many more times can I write about bugs?  Today appeared one of those slender black winged creatures whose long legs dangle down when airborne. It was delicate and quite beautiful in an ominous way. I trapped it under a glass, slid a postcard underneath, and took it outside. I have written about wasps, a firefly, big black ants (one big black ant in particular), and my favorites, of course, the stinkbugs. I have done cluster flies to death. Flies are the only insects I kill. It wasn’t until I  wrote about spiders that my friend Ann finally put her foot down. “Enough with the bugs,” Ann said. But I have to write about something. And the bugs keep coming.

Today, and for several days running, there has been a tiny pale brown ant crawling around aimlessly on the side of the gray bookcase right next to my chair, oops, it seems to have disappeared. So featureless, so smooth the bookcase, round and round went the ant. Was it looking for landmarks? Was it lost? I wonder what passes for loneliness in an ant. It was right there a second ago, rather a reliable companion. Where did it go? Bug or no bug, I’m curious, so I google ants. Wow. Ants have  been around since the early Cretaceous Period, 45 million years ago.  My respect for them grows. We are the newcomers here, an arrogant species, and arrogance is not useful for survival. We are not built to last.

I look again at yesterday’s fly, dead on its feet, so to speak, stuck to the thin wooden frame that surrounds a small painting leaning against the window by my chair. The fly looks like a piece of art. It died after I sprayed it with windex, the only thing I had handy, and it slid down the window feet first, landing on its hindlegs and there it remains, stuck standing up, as if gazing out at the late summer afternoon. Can one say about a fly that it has hind legs?  It’s the  only bug I don’t like. Bug. An all-purpose name for a million different creatures. Such a funny little word, bug. Almost adorable.

The word that obsesses me these days is ruin. Lower case. It sounds like what it is, starting with ru, as in rue the day. It even looks like its definition. ruin. ruin. ruin. Nothing left standing, nothing toppled sideways or piercing the below, everything brought down, leveled. The end of us. And that dot over the i? The last speck of smoke just about to vanish.

The day is over. Thank god I started writing. Lying in bed with my dogs I have one last unwelcome thought. Maybe it isn’t smoke.

Maybe it’s a fly.

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Abigail Thomas has four children, twelve grandchildren, one great grandchild, two dogs, and a high school education. Her eight books include Safekeeping; A Three Dog Life; What Comes Next and How To Like It. Recently her essays have been published in Narrative, The Atticus Review, Barren, JMWW and Brevity, among others. She is finishing a book of tiny essays, Stiil Life, to be published by The Golden Notebook, an independent bookstore in Woodstock, New York, where she lives. She recently turned eighty years old and can’t stop bragging about it.
Her favorite sweet treat is no longer available. It was the hot fudge sundae served at Schrafft’s, a chain of restaurants long since gone. She makes do now with her own hot fudge and vanilla ice cream.