tollipop

communion

"Look how beautiful and delicate and intricate she is.  This incredible little creature has brought so much curiosity into my life. I'm so in love.  One of my goals is to teach people to love every animal--even the ones they were taught to hate.  Keeping strange(r) pets has taught me to search for the little personalities inside them.  Even the bugs we keep have the most incredible and delicate ways.  When some people hear about my pets, they tell me they squash beetles and chop up or shoot snakes.  I cannot imagine deeper ignorance.  Invalidating the soul of an animal has to be one of the worst things a human can do (note: if your life is being threatened by an animal, you have to do what you have to do).  My greatest dream is for people to love all animals.  My snake isn't going to bite you (she's terrified of you). She is beautiful and her tiny life matters so much. (Please try not to tell me if you hate her, it makes me so sad).  All animals want to live and love.  Please remember this the next time you find your foot over a bee.  Be nice to animals and your heart will be transformed by the gratitude they show you."

:: These words have been like a balm to my thoughts all week...borrowed with permission from Izzy's Instagram ::

 

what once was lost now is found

Dear reader, do you remember me telling you about a little one-armed mantis named Pip whom Caroline discovered and brought home on the last day of school?  And do you remember me wringing my hands over the fact he was a picky eater and refused to molt?

Well, he disappeared from the narrative two weeks ago when I came home from church to find him missing.  

It was my own incredibly negligent fault, though at the time I thought I was so in tune.  I do that every now and then, flatter myself into thinking I'm "one" with the animals when in reality nothing could be more unwanted than my presence.  

At any rate, I left Pip on a houseplant while I went to church, thinking perhaps a change of scenery would do him good, a bit of fresh air.  My older mantis, Kingsley, hangs upside down motionless for hours on end and I assumed Pip would follow suit.  

A word about baby mantises: they're more like sugar-crazed acrobats than meditative savants.

I looked everywhere for Pip in what can only be described as the most delicate search party this world has ever known.  No dogs were called in.  No National Guard.  When you're looking for something the size of a staple with the resilience of a soap bubble, let me assure you: proceeding with caution is the first rule of thumb.  

As it so happened, my efforts were in vain.  I left the sliding glass door open for the next several days, hoping that as a mantis tends to climb toward the light, perhaps Pip would escape outdoors and stand his original chance of faring in the wilds.  

Needless to say, I felt badly.  Perhaps I should have set Pip free from day one, perhaps I had no business trying to nurse him to health.  When has a human being ever done something for an insect it couldn't do better for itself?  We only step on them!  Well, there was that time I rescued Charles Portis from a mismolt, but even then I suspect he would've been better off without me in the first place.

But I digress.  Yesterday, which started out on a rough note, I found myself vacuuming with the intensity one usually reserves for major demolition projects.  I was consumed with worry about a personal care and paying no attention to my movements when I happened to look down and see PIP, sitting on the floor, right in the path of the oncoming nozzle!  

I'm still caught by that particular detail.  I'd been vacuuming and staring into space for the past half hour.  I don't know what persuaded me, in that crucial moment, to suddenly notice what I was doing.  

So here is Pip!  I wish he could tell us his story.  In the interim, he managed to pull off a stunning, one-handed molt and if you look closely, you'll see a tiny T-rex arm where once there was only a poor, blackened stump!  

Given my state of mind at the time, I was truly astonished.  It would seem a tad corny to chalk this up to divine intervention, but it would also seem a tad ungrateful not to.  

Who knows why such small, unexpected joys come our way?  What do they mean?  Do they mean anything?  I'm not sure...I'm not the type who tries to infuse meaning into every detail, who needs to assign omens to the routine of the day, who wants to construe the return of a mantis as some great, auspicious sign.  I don't see it as an auspicious sign, to be clear, but I do know God was aware of my little heartbreak over that bug and I also trust He knows my ongoing concern for someone very dear.  

I know both those things.  I don't know how related they are, but seeing Pip on the floor yesterday morning not only filled me with shocked delight, it slowed the worry in my heart a little, it let me catch my breath.  And with that pause I was able to return to a steadier version of myself.

I can't imagine a greater gift such a homecoming could bring.  

how much better can one day get

This morning I woke up and was pleasantly surprised to notice my dinosaur tattoo, which I'd already forgotten administering the previous afternoon.    

Isn't that a nice way to start the day, realizing you're actually much cooler than you were able to recall?  

Then my nieces came over, which meant many things.  It meant swimming, puzzle solving, and pasta making according to a recipe my niece googled for me on her phone.  It meant tattoo applying, glitter sprinkling, smoothie making, snuggling, and lots of LOLs.  

In a moment of greater sobriety, I'd like to say how wonderful it is to be an aunt.  It's a priceless gift, getting to know my amazing nieces and nephews.  In a way it's like seeing the best part of my siblings and being reminded how much I love them, marveling at the goodness of life and the hope I feel for the future.

My youngest niece sent me this thought provoking sentiment several moments after leaving our home.  

If no other good thing happened, this text alone makes my day.  

But good things did happen.  No sooner had my nieces and nephew left than there was a knock at the door.  Standing before me was the son of a dear friend, the coolest, funniest kid you could ever imagine.  He'd found a dragonfly floating in his grandparent's pool earlier that day and thought of me.  

Dear reader, for someone to behold the grandeur of such a creature...and think of me?  Stop the world!  It's not possible to deserve such goodness!  It's too much, I can't bear it.  

Some days, this is just the way it goes.  There's too much goodness and it leaves me bewildered, overwhelmed, wondering how such things can possibly be. Even in my hardest moments, I cannot completely abandon these thoughts. The beauty of the earth insists upon it--this quiet, detailed, unspeakably gorgeous reminder of a great and deeper goodness. 

I don't expect life to be without sorrow or pain, I see it also exists in bewildering degrees, and I have a healthy respect for the severity of being tested in this arena.  But I see goodness is the constant, stronger force, it will never fail, and it's where I hope I will always put my trust.  

Today, with its buoyancy of dinosaur tattoos, nieces' hugs, and such a touching, exquisite gift, was a reminder of these things.

eat, pray, molt

I may have mentioned this before, but something I love about being around praying mantises is the predictability of their behavior.  Instinct, the fixed patterns of response in animals: isn't this what separates us from their world?  I mean, humans have instincts, but we're also endowed with the double-edged sword of will.  I don't know to what degree animals operate from will, some of the more intelligent ones certainly must, but it does seem to me a praying mantis is hardwired merely for instinct.  

Of course, I love to imagine Kingsley's will at work, I love to imagine he has whims and notions, preferences for nightcaps, and harbors a secret wish to drive the Trans Canada Highway together.  I love to think we have a certain understanding, that he gets me, that there is communion between us.

But at the end of the day, it's the familiarity of his behavior that brings me solace, it's the steadiness of his patterns, the undeviating course of his ways.  I actually marvel at it.  If Kingsley were human, I bet he'd never screw up a recipe because of a fuzzy commitment to measuring, I bet he'd disdain emotional eating, and I'm quite positive he wouldn't write a novel, only to flounder around in its revision for the rest of his life.  

I'm thinking there's a lesson in there for me, somewhere.  

talk therapy

Dear reader, I don't know what kind of antics Pip is pulling, but he has yet to molt.  Mind you, I'm not terribly familiar with the Tenodera sinensis, but I'm thinking two weeks and running is a long time for any young mantis not to extricate itself from its girdle of old skin.

Last night I moved Kingsley into a bigger habitat (note to prospective mantis keepers: your mantis should have at least four inches from where it hangs on its perch to the bottom of the habitat in order to have sufficient room to molt) and then, upon further consideration, moved Pip into Kingsley's old digs.  I've been keeping Pip in a tiny house habitat because I worried he was too small and disadvantaged by his missing arm to successfully hunt...but now I'm beginning to wonder if such close quarters might impede a molt.  

Who knows?  I wish he'd open up and tell me his issues.  I mean, I get it, Pip: life is not for the faint of heart.  Who signed you up for this deal, anyway?  Who signed you up for being hatched out of some gigantic, foamy egg with a zillion other siblings who'd just as soon eat you as walk you to the bus stop, who decreed you should have the singular misfortune of losing your left arm, and who dreamed up the treacherous notion that in order to flourish, you must break out of your rapidly hardening body skin at least seven times over in a process so vulnerable it's a miracle anyone survives??! 

(a moment of silence, for effect...)

I mean, what's it going to be, Pip, darling?  This thing is real.  It's happening. You have to get your head in the game, dear boy.  It's go time.  

I'm not above bribery, by the way.  How else do you think I persuaded Caroline to get her immunizations?  Do you like Legos, Pip?  Or do your tastes run more to cash, cars, and small islands?

Either way, you can't make this stuff up.  Life can be crazy.  It can be rough. I'm not going to take that away from you, Pip.  

But it can be so good, too.  

The choice is yours, dear fellow, and I respect that.  But if only you knew how badly I wanted you to make a go of it...I think it would give you pause to consider.   

pip vs. world

On the last day of school, Caroline came home with a praying mantis she found by the tennis courts.  He's missing half an antenna and, of greater concern, half his left forearm.  She asked how I thought he might have lost the arm and so far none of our theories would make for a reassuring bedtime story.  

I've been detailing a bit of the experience on Instagram, if you care to click the blue icon on the upper left hand corner of this screen...but perhaps you have bigger things to worry about than the fate of one small, inconsequential bug.

That's a pretty good reason to follow his journey, by the way.  Not to minimize your problems, but I'm guessing your fate doesn't hang in the balance of you being able to rapidly extricate yourself from a corset-like suit of body armor using just one hand.  

Over the weekend I took Caroline to California for a volleyball tournament, leaving Pip (the mantis) in the company of four fruit flies.  When I returned, he was all by himself.  I take that as an encouraging sign, but he still has yet to molt.  Molting is a tenuous process in the best of conditions, dear reader...it's certainly not made more ideal by the absence of one's left arm.  

Kingsley, on the other hand, is molting up a storm.  He molted a few days ago and as you can see from his previous two exoskeletons, he's rocketing off the growth charts.  Peter, from BugsinCyberSpace, thinks Kingsley might be female, which may or may not prompt Caroline to come up with a new name.  My girls are rather infamous for naming their hamsters according to a particular gender only to find out they are of the other persuasion...yet retaining the original names and corresponding pronouns anyway.  

At any rate, school's out and we are greatly relieved.  Later this month I will travel to Canada to visit my dad.  I haven't looked at the revision of my novel for quite some time, it seems a bit lost to me at the moment.  These and other concerns trouble me but joy and beauty abound, as well.  That's life, isn't it? You can't completely shake off your worries but you can realize they coexist with indescribable goodness.  I've found that contrast to be almost surreal, at times.

Here's to summer, dear reader.  Here's to a break from school.  Here's to Pip making it through his next molt and the world becoming a better place.  Here's to love, hope, and peace.  Here's to slowing down and enjoying the good moments, there are so many.  

playdates and a grim hiatus

Dear reader, please allow me to put your fears to rest by assuring you Miles and Kingsley's playdate was brief and highly supervised.  I suspect they may be molting soon, so "friends as snacks" probably wasn't on Kingley's mind, anyway.

That said, I'm really here in a moment of frustration.  This has been a quiet morning and I've had almost nothing else to attend to beyond the revision of my novel, yet it is defying me like the most recalcitrant teenager to walk the planet!  

I've taken a break from writing for the past month or so, waiting for feedback from a freelance editor, and I'm now trying to assimilate her advice with my existing vision of the story.  

I don't know how else to articulate this experience other than to say last night I found myself imagining scenarios wherein I was given my choice of a form of torture, and I kept choosing every other option except for having to revise the final draft of a novel.  I mean, drawn and quartered?--all that's required of me is to show up.  Confronted by a coliseum of lions?--at least I'd stand a fighting chance!

How twisted is it I was actually consoling myself with these thoughts?!

At any rate, as you may know I have this weird anxiety with Tollipop...undoubtedly spurred by my little brother's mean texts, wherein I worry people will come visit and there is nothing new to read.  

Please  know this up front: there will be nothing new to read.  

I've descended into the abyss of relentless agony, of the fruitless tinkering with a sentence for the space of one hour variety, wretchedly wishing to exchange my soul for a roomful of emergency swear vials.  

Please, if you wish to see my life in happier moments, click the blue Instagram icon on the upper left hand side of this page as I will keep it updated.

It may be awhile before I return to blogging.  

a few quick items of business

We have new friends in our house!  A sweet budwing mantis, Parasphendale affinis, and a giant African variety going by Sphodromantis viridis, which I believe translates from the Latin to: watch out, you just slipped to the bottom of the food chain.  

Caroline wants to call her mantis Billings.  I am considering Miles.  As of this moment we are still undecided.   

Springtime in Utah can be tough on morale.

Izzy recently performed at the grand opening of db Brasserie, a restaurant created by chef Daniel Boulud.  I got a little excited about this, as I first learned of him on an episode of Anthony Bourdain's travel/eating documentary wherein he visits Boulud's home town of Lyon, France.  I was intrigued by what I learned of this man...so it was quite a lovely surprise Izzy was able to play for him.

Finally, I wanted to say I've reopened my Etsy shop!  I will probably offer original works only, as it proved a bit of a headache to offer quality prints in the past.  Someday I may figure out the process to my liking, but for now it will be original art.  

In the meantime, I promise I'm still working on my novel but painting is also a passion, and I'm happy to offer some of my work for sale.  

Wishing you a peaceful weekend.   

rest in peace, dear higgins

Over the weekend, Higgins passed away.  I could kind of see it coming, though it was hard to discern whether he was truly on the wane or proceeding through life in his usual, delicate manner.  

With Higgins, I never had to worry about calls home from school: Come get your mantis, Ms. Tollipop.  He pushed his way in line.

Or: Come get your mantis, Ms. Tollipop.  He just said a bad word. 

No, with Higgins, it was all calm seas and smooth sailing.  Not a cloud on the horizon.  

Except for the fact he didn't particularly care for my company...but that is a trifling concern!  Hardly worth the mention!  I was never one to foist myself upon his presence, mind you, unless you count my penchant for dropping in unannounced whenever I found myself in the vicinity of his pied-à-terre, even though he expressly stated his wish for me to make other arrangements.

When I asked what he meant by "other arrangements", he made a face as if I'd squeezed too much lemon in his tea and muttered something beneath his breath which I could not distinctly verify, though it sounded very much along the lines of:  Go away.  I don't like you.

But these are not the moments to dwell upon when recalling one's rich association with a dearly departed friend!  Nor should we summon the memories wherein he flinched from my touch or raised his forearms in that classic mantis threat pose which is typically interpreted to mean: get lost, but I determined to take in good humor.  

He was, after all, a sophisticate in the most extreme sense of the word.  So I could never be sure whether he genuinely loathed me or if he was merely being sarcastic, wherein telling someone you can't stand her is actually a very complicated way of expressing hidden admiration.  

Deeply hidden admiration.  

Never let it be said I failed to give Higgins every benefit of the doubt! 

happy thanksgiving

Life has been busy lately, filled with music lessons, concerts, a birthday girl and her party. 

It's amazing to think my sweet Caroline is twelve years old.  She really is very sweet, conscientious, kind hearted, and anxious to do well.  Having such a child means a thousand heartaches, watching her go through this world which can be callous to the tender in spirit.  

And yet I am so lucky.

Last night, a special treat: I was invited to be the guest speaker at a local Cub Scout meeting.  

What did I talk about?  Bugs, of course.  

Oh, it was a grand time, I tell you, and my audience was nothing less than the raptest of the rapt.  For what could awaken the imagination of an eight year old boy more than tales of exoskeletons, of moltings gone wrong yet miraculously recovered, of ruthless predators fighting their way to the top of the food chain, perfectly rolled dung balls fifty times the weight of their handlers, beetle dances and navigations by the Milky Way, and those who devour carrion in the desert?  

Needless to say, the Tollipop Beetle Club swelled considerably in ranks by the end of the evening!

This morning I read an address given by M. Russell Ballard, who is a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles:  

"...Our belief in the overriding importance of families is rooted in restored doctrine.  We know of the sanctity of families in both directions of our eternal existence.  We know that before this life we lived with our Heavenly Father as part of His family, and we know that family relationships can endure beyond death...

Our family-centered perspective should make us strive to be the best parents in the world.  It should give us enormous respect for our children, who truly are our spiritual siblings, and it should cause us to devote whatever time is necessary to strengthen our families.  Indeed, nothing is more critically connected to happiness--both our own and that of our children--than how well we love and support one another within the family."

These words reflect what's at the core of my being: a feeling of profound respect for my children, an awareness of the great gift and responsibility it is to raise them.  The frequent realization I've been lapped several times over.

On a broader note, I hope these feelings guide me with every step I take: profound respect, wonder and awareness.  I'm not saying they always do, but that is still my hope.  I think they go to the heart of gratitude, revealing greater beauties in life and providing an important context for darker moments.  
Wishing you a lovely weekend, and a deeper awareness of it.