Cecropia

I have no idea how old I was exactly, but I keep telling people I was nine. It’s bound to be a close enough approximation and as with most things related to childhood memories, there’s a haze to that kind of thing that can be baffling at best when trying to put a specific number to when you were what or when, where, or why. I just know that I was a child and, for the sake of this account, probably about nine. Also funny, and acting as a damning indictment of my memory, is that much as I don’t know my exact age I’m also just as uncertain as to why I was where I was. I just know my mother had driven us to a little used car lot on the strip of Mandan, a tiny little town that is attached like a leech to our tiny little city that likewise desperately wants to be something more. And it’s raining. That’s the part I know for absolute certain.

I can forget why I was where I was. I can forget how old I am. But I’ll never forget when its raining, not even in a memory.

So there we were, standing in a car lot, in the rain and accompanied by another family. I don’t know who it was exactly, but there were only ever two options so at least there’s a picture in my mind that can haphazardly form without any effect that might be too terrifyingly Frankensteinian. We were all huddled around the cars and some of us were laughing, although to be honest I don’t think I was. An appreciation for the sound, rush, and smell of rain isn’t something I was born with so much as a living thing that grew from me over the years. And then, just like that, a rush of commotion and those very particular childhood sounds that told of either adventures formed or treasure unearthed.

It was the latter. And as it turned out, it was a treasure I’d never forget.

I suppose to underscore this I should make clear (if only briefly) how my mind works. The truth is, and as sorry as this might sound, that I never really remember moments. It makes life a bit of a drag and it makes writing an absolutely abysmal affair at times, but that’s just how these things tend to go. Instead, I remember flashes. There’s rarely if ever the memory of the emotion of a time, no matter how special or sad the occasion happened to probably be. There are rarely carefully catalogued specifics. Instead, in the white haze of dense fog, I remember the little snippets that flash just right and, since I am who I am, those snippets that burst through the dreamlike banks are most often animals or birds, insects and, perhaps on the rarest of occasion, a person. But for the most part, those photograph flashes are reserved for those who are not like me.

I remember the first time I saw a Great Horned Owl. I remember the first time I saw a Great Blue Heron and the same goes for a Wood Duck. Even more profoundly, I remember walking through Athens and while my memories of the Parthenon are now next to nonexistent, I see as clear as day the first (and probably last) Hoopoe I’d ever seen. I remember standing outside the Coliseum in Rome, but so much more than that I remember seeing my first Hooded Crow. I remember how it flew as a scavenger only to be chased away by a much more agitating gull. And I remember its colleague that I tried and failed to photograph as it sat on a railing by some nearby ruins.

Clear as day. Every time.

There is so much joy attached to the life around me. And on dark days I rely not on past lives or conquests of varying sorts, but on those so unlike me.

This is all to say, have you ever seen a Cecropia Moth? They’re titans, really. Seeing them brings to mind Old Gods or Mothra battling Godzilla, something great and vast and old. In reality, most everyone I ever tell about them utters the dagger-in-the-back “Well it’s just a moth though” betrayal. And I mean sure, I guess you could say that. But it’s also North America’s largest native moth. Its wings are significant enough that, were you to see them fly at night, you’d swear you were watching something even a bit larger than our regional bats. And they’re absolutely stunning. Whether it’s the distinct markings and eyelets on its wings or the fuzzy (and adorably chubby) red and white banded body, they’re visually arresting in all the ways that matter and it makes perfect sense how and why they would capture a child’s imagination in the rain.

Everyone was standing in a circle around a car that I’m almost positive was a bluish gray although that just be my seeping memory of the rain and clouds, and one of the older boys got on his hands and knees to crawl underneath for this mystery we’d yet to solve. No one said anything about just what that boy had seen, we all just…flocked to the excitement. So when he came back out and up holding a moth far bigger than his hands, though still careful to shield the moth from the rain it’d undoubtedly been hiding from, the sound of awe and fascination was universal. It was that sound. The one you hear not just when you see something beautiful, but when you see something beautiful that you’ve never seen before.

And no one in that used car lot, not the parents nor the kids who stood in the rain for reasons I can’t recall, had ever seen anything like it. Sure, we’d grown up with swallowtails and monarchs. But a fully grown Cecropia Moth of absolute jaw-dropping size? That was the kind of new that you just don’t forget.

I didn’t anyway. And I actually spent years remembering that until I saw another when I was…let’s just say twelve for the sake of avoiding that whole numbers/memory thing this time around. I was milling around my family’s backyard near the railroad tie steps that ushered you out of the backyard and up along the side of the house. We had old neighbors then, a nice gardening-conscious elderly couple whose name I won’t spell here for the sake of not wanting to muck it up, and they always had leafy vines that would topple over our fencing and house everything from Yellow Warblers to the bees that I quite unpleasantly discovered could kill me. It was an ordinary space, just eight or ten feet of vines and wood, but every now and then you’d see something memorable in there. (Justified shoutout to the aforementioned warbler).

Then, one day, I saw my second Cecropia moth. I don’t even remember exactly how I found it beyond a “Secret Garden” highly stylized reveal that exists in my childish memory, one of a young me turning over a leaf or two to see the chunky titan on the underside. This one didn’t linger as it had no rain to hide from and chose instead to explode in a burst of giant flapping wings as it haphazardly flew past me and high up into the air. That part I remember clearest. I remember standing on the railroad ties in the summer breeze, watching as my second Cecropia disappeared into the trees that lined and surrounded our backyard. I just watched it go and I loved every minute of it.

And that was it.

It was gone.

For the longest time, that beautiful moth that brought to mind all manner of fantastical things to spring up in my imagination became a figment. A spotlight figment, sure. A lighthouse or a red hot flare. But a figment all the same as I spent the next twenty years of my life wishing I could see one again. I’d wander through our North Dakota attempts at forests and hope year after year that I’d see another burst of light in the form of an incredible creature I so fondly remembered, and to be honest it never worked. The space beneath cars on rainy days remained unoccupied and the vines were eventually replaced by a species of plant not nearly so invasive, and with those childhood spots now gone, my moth friend seemed to go as well.

And as odd as it may sound, I spent every one of those twenty years hoping I’d see one again. And, when I decided that 2020 would be my last year in North Dakota, I spent every moment of last year’s summer and the beginning of this one hoping I’d see one more before I left. That seems a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it? What are the odds of seeing something that’s eluded me for the last twenty years, let alone right in time for a move (and what would obviously be a self-serving turn of events)? What are the odds of, with less than a month to go, a coworker coming up to you and showing you a picture of one he’d seen on his garage door? What are the odds of that very same coworker calling you an hour later to tell me that, while on his lunch, he saw that the aforementioned super-being was still hanging out in the shade?

And more than that, what are the odds that I’d drive over to an apartment complex I’d only been to once and see the object of my childhood daydreams relaxing without a care in the world on a warm but breezy summer day? Due to the hyper-specificity of the questions, I’d be willing to bet “Slim to None” would be an accurate answer. And yet there she was. And somehow, after twenty years of remembering every fragment of a pair of childhood moments, blowing up and exaggerating the size and majesty of every frame, this fresh new memory was everything I’d hoped for and more. She was just as daunting, as beautiful, and as clumsily charming as I’d remembered the others I’d seen before.

She was my entire childhood in a moment and a fitting goodbye to my life in North Dakota.

It was only after moments of study and reflection that I carefully removed her from the concrete and hot metal, carrying her gently and with utmost care not to touch or tarnish her wings, and transported her to a fresh collection of trees far away from the heat and unsettling interest of swarming swallows. She all too happily clambered (again quite clumsily) off my hand and into the leaves and branches, and after staying for a few minutes longer to watch her find her footing and marvel, I turned away and began my slow walk back to my car alone.

It was so odd, those moments.

If I could’ve just stayed in those trees for the rest of the afternoon and watched her, I would have in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t even have hesitated. And while I think so much of that truth is due in large part to the simple fact that there’s something so magical about the living things around us, there was something more to it as well. In that moment, I felt like I was walking away from my childhood. Away from the memories that had kept me company all this time as I waited with bated breath to see something remarkable again; for those little flashes of light that so often helped me keep the darkness of life at bay.

It was the strangest feeling and even now it’s a trial not to put on my boots and go out in the hopes that I’ll see her again.

But I won’t. Because I have my new memory now, one to live side-by-side with the decades-old photograph flash of a life gone by. And I have that quiet hope that the next time our paths cross, it won’t take us twenty years to get there.

And, if it does, that it won’t feel like such a long wait.