×

Maybe mothers aren’t all that different from spider that gives everything to its kids

On a long, late night drive last week, I stumbled upon a radio program that aims to explore the topic of love and how it unfolds, beats, bends and connects us.

It’s a big task, telling love’s story. I wasn’t convinced I was up for a bunch of sappy romances, if that’s how it was going to roll out, but I put in a lot of road time and good radio has the potential to save my sanity, so I gave it a try.

How did they kick it off? With a story about a common spider — the kind that is likely spinning a web in my basement right now — that spends the majority of her lifespan spinning an unexceptional but practical web in which to lay her sack of eggs that will hatch and feed on another set of eggs she’s laid specifically for that purpose. And when they’ve run out of other options for nourishment in the web, the mother taps on her silk, summoning her babies, and then, well, I didn’t really see this one coming… They eat her.

And in that moment, driving 65 mph down the highway after a late night of work and a long and challenging week with my children, I cried.

Last night, I was leaving my mom and dad’s house when I remembered I needed to make a dish to bring to a party I had the next evening. I forgot about it, so I didn’t have any ingredients for the promised festive appetizer, and a trip to the grocery store with two kids is a good three-hour extravaganza that I didn’t have time for the next day.

I swore. And my mom went to her freezer and gathered all the ingredients I needed for a dip and she sent me on my way, just another small act in a lifetime of having a mother who would just as easily give me her life as she does her frozen bread bowl.

It sounds silly saying it that way, too trite for the magnitude of the sum of all of motherhood’s parts, but in that moment, driving down the highway with the vision of that spider’s sacrifice, it felt like I was allowed to feel the true weight of my children on my body.

Your heart forever walking around in the world? Yes. We’ve all heard that one. But this spider’s story resonated more with me.

Piece by piece by piece, we give — our time, our milk, our lessons, our worry, our words, our sleep, our hopes, our songs, our bodies, our space, our home. Our freezer bread.

And it may not be a big, grand finale gesture like our sister in the web weaves, but if she could see beyond where she sits in the corner with the dust and her life’s mission — if she could see you up there at 3 a.m. laying on the hardwood floor outside your toddler’s bedroom door, because it’s the only way she’ll quiet down now — she would nod her spider head and admit we’re not that different.

Newsletter

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *
   

Starting at $4.62/week.

Subscribe Today