The Caterpillar Flail

On writing, play & abundance. Plus, allllll the book recs for October 📚☀️🎉

Hey friend,

One.

My son, Henry, came into the bathroom while I was applying makeup before work. Words were falling out on top of each other, but I picked up ‘plum tree’ and ‘caterpillars.’ He was pulling my arm, bubbling over with enthusiasm. I was thinking about all the things I needed to do when I got to work, but thought, “Why not? I can get into my trackies and uggs, I can spare a minute.” 

Henry practically bounced through the chicken-wire door into our abandoned chicken yard. Our dog has killed 11 chickens, so we have abandoned the pursuit for now¹.

It was completely overgrown with weeds, beneath a lemon tree canopy. The weeds were nearly the height of the chicken coop. It was a jungle. Behind the coop was a plum tree. I had not seen this tree in a long time. My husband planted the scrawny little thing, all knobbly branches and skinned knees, about a year ago. I had not had a reason to go into the yard since all the chickens were killed. But Henry found stark branches framed against a cerulean sky, adorned with tiny white flowers, and thought, “Mum needs to see this.” 

We got down onto our knees amongst the gravel and lemons in various states of decay, peered into the undergrowth, and Henry pointed out a furry black caterpillar. I don’t remember the last time I saw a caterpillar. I wracked my brain to remember what the malevolent spitfires from primary school looked like. Do they actually spit fire? Who knows. 

While I did give a motherly admonishment to not touch the caterpillar, Henry was besotted. In the backyard alone, Henry has two bikes, two scooters, a trampoline, a tree fort with a slide with a tyre sandpit at the bottom, a cricket ball tied to a string from the roof to practice batting, and a second, larger sandpit underneath the tree fort. There’s occasional access to Zac’s shed where he can rasp and saw to his heart’s content. And a swing. But it’s the jungle he loves exploring (and digging in the black dirt behind the sheds). 

Photo by Jayrocky on Pexels.

Two.

The fifth house I lived in when I was a kid was a brand new house in suburbia. Out the back we had a sandpit, a swing set, and a white wooden cubby house with a deep green door and a red door knob. But my brother and I got serrated butter knives, climbed the back fence to the vacant lot behind our house, and hacked pig melons. I remember in a rental property in another area, my parents’ warnings about the needles in the sand at the park, don’t go with anyone you don’t know, stay away from the road. When we moved to a new, nicer area, my Dad told us, “Out you go! Go play!” but was disappointed when we came back shortly after (“you guys don’t know how to play!”). 

Three.

My husband likes to tell me, “there were no rules about where I could and could not go on the farm as a kid.” I beg to disagree. There is a dam on the farm. Certainly he was not allowed to go in that paddock. His Dad had a shed full of woodworking machines, certainly not there either. I bet he wasn’t allowed on the road. But he recounts happy hours lost in the bush with the dogs, climbing trees, building forts, making things. 

I wonder sometimes if Zac was born with this placid, contented nature, or whether it’s from being the youngest of four children and hours playing outside. When we were at the farm last time, I sat outside near the fire pit with my books and my journal for a bit, but ended up tramping around the bush, breaking off dead branches to throw into the fire for several hours. I was generously left to my own devices to poke at smouldering logs, snap heavy branches, drag them, dump them unceremoniously on the fire. I knew the kids were inside, enjoying time with their grandparents. The whole thing felt like play. Even though writing this newsletter feels like utter delight amongst all my grown-up responsibilities, sometimes I worry I will run out of ideas, things to write.

Four.

The other day, my youngest, George, was helping me by holding the front door while I brought bags of food into the house from the car. George yelled, “Look! Caterpillar!” He promptly abandoned his position at the door and laid on the floor. So I put down the bags and laid down next to him. We watched the caterpillar. Have you ever noticed that a caterpillar’s back legs lift up first and then the whole body ripples forwards? It’s a soiree of golden-brown and black bristles. The caterpillar had minuscule red pincer legs and a raw, crab-like face swaying from side to side. I would have breezed past it, burdened down with shopping bags and to do lists, on my way through the door. 

Five.

I mentioned the caterpillar to my husband over a cup of tea, a bright spark amongst some moping. I described its movement, wondered out loud if we have spitfires in our garden. Unexpectedly, he told me about Annie Dillard’s essay on inchworms. She likens inchworms to panicking writers worrying that their words are going nowhere, that they’ve hit the end of their creativity. This feels like the perfect place to end this piece, this flailing caterpillar, back on the ground once more:

“You write it all, discovering it at the end of the line of words. The line of words is a fiber optic, flexible as wire; it illumines the path just before its fragile tip. You probe with it, delicate as a worm.

Few sights are so absurd as that of an inchworm leading its dimwit life. Inchworms are the caterpillar larvae of several moths or butterflies. The cabbage looper, for example, is an inchworm. I often see an inchworm: it is a skinny bright green thing, pale and thin as a vein, an inch long, and apparently totally unfit for life in this world. It wears out its days in constant panic.

Every inchworm I have seen was stuck in long grasses. The wretched inchworm hangs from the side of a grassblade and throws its head around from side to side, seeming to wail. What! No further? Its back pair of nubby feet clasps the grass stem; its front three pairs of nubs rear back and flail in the air, apparently in search of a footing. What! No further? What? It searches everywhere in the wide world for the rest of the grass, which is right under its nose. By dumb luck it touches the grass. Its front legs hang on; it lifts and buckles its green inch, and places its hind legs just behind its front legs. Its body makes a loop, a bight. All it has to do now is slide its front legs up the grass stem. Instead it gets lost. It throws up its head and front legs, flings its upper body out into the void, and panics again. What? No further? End of world? And so forth, until it actually reaches the grasshead’s tip. By then its wee weight may be bending the grass toward some other grass plant. Its davening, apocalyptic prayers sway the grass head bump it into something. I have seen it many times. The blind and frantic numbskull makes it one grassblade and onto another one, which it will climb in virtual hysteria for several hours. Every step brings it to the universe’s rim. And now – No further? End of world? Ah, here’s ground. What! No further? Yike!” 

(The Writing Life by Annie Dillard).

I’m Loving 

This book is life-changing. I read it and cried. I read it again and highlighted. Then I text it to my friends to tell them to read it, so I could discuss!

This little book reminded me afresh how revolutionary Jesus was with the women of his day. I smashed through it in a day and, again, texted all my friends to find someone else to read it! 

I know I linked my new favourite Puritan last month, but seriously, his words were a balm to my soul. I was convicted and encouraged that God is teaching me contentment right where I am, not in some new circumstance. I could only read it one chapter at a time, highlighter in hand, but it was absolutely what I needed. Please tell me if you read it!

I finally read Save Me The Plums and it was as good as

Stacy Bronec

and

Ashlee Gadd

said it would be. Who would have thought stories about food and creating a magazine would keep me up at night?!

I had a run of page-turners messing with my sleep this month including the fantasy thriller Ninth House, It Ends With Us (thanks

Dani Elgas

!) and None of This Is True. 

Station Eleven sticks out because it was completely unexpected and ethereal. Like, the vibe of the book stayed with me. It is not your typical end-of-the-world novel, it asks what is the point of art when you are fighting for survival?

This pomegranate molasses vinaigrette is easing me into spring. The whisking makes me feel super fancy!  

I bought some paneer on a whim, because I had paneer curry at an Indian restaurant, but got overwhelmed with all the possible methods online. Any recipe recommendations would be great! 

In Case You Missed It

Who's that Poet?

Thanks for reading! Let me know in the comments:

1. What have you read lately that you couldn’t put down?

2. What is something you do that feels like play among your grown-up responsibilities?

3. What worries get in the way of your play?

4. A paneer curry recipe!

1. Fun fact, not long after writing this essay, Zac surprised me with cyclone fencing and eight new chickens - five Hylines and three Isa Browns.