Fuzzy Bazillapedes

I wake up from a nap on my meditation cushion in the late afternoon sun of an August day. Head on the cushion, blanket below my shoulders, feet stretched out towards my bed. Yesterday I met my ex-husband to put to sleep the puppy we raised, but today I am still.

The sun filters through the screen door and boat masts clank brightly outside.

I know I was humming a mantra when I fell asleep, but on waking what I recall are the long feathery bugs with a bazillion legs I've seen skimming across the floor when I've turned on a light in the middle of the night. I guess they come out of gaps in the floor boards of this old house, or chinks in the fireplace, close to where my pillow is right now.

May he be safe. May he be happy. May he be peaceful.

I suppose because it's daylight, or because my sadness has given way to exhaustion, I'm relaxed as I wonder if these are centipedes or millipedes or something altogether different. Not long ago I gave to a hospital thrift store stacks of nature guides that belonged to my grandfather. And I wonder if I gave away his guide to insects. I know I held onto books of Eastern Birds, Shells of the Atlantic Coast, Trees, and Night Skies. They keep me good company in this garret studio on the little harbor. But I gave away many that pointed to other places and times.

My grandfather is buried in a quiet town in South Carolina, his body strangely confined in a steel vault that will separate him from the natural world indefinitely. He did not live that way, so it's nice to think that each book might provide a moment in someone's life where they step outside and look at a flower or some local creature in a new way. I remember Georgia O'Keeffe's observation "Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time - like to have a friend takes time."

On the first page of each book he wrote his name in elegant, long letters. I like to think of them being scattered like seeds around this little town as people pull them from the shelves and carry them home, tucked under an arm. I wish I'd added my own inscription to each of the books: "This was my grandfather's book. I hope you enjoy it." And maybe dated them. Or maybe added the dates of his life and how he grew up hunting and fishing in the woods of Appalachia, son of a town doctor who died much too early in a car accident. Or how frustrated he was by the hernia that kept him from serving in World War II. And how incomparably gentle he was.

It is said that the karmic balls the Buddha started rolling 2600 years ago are still rolling. So it was a small, happy measure to share these books that mingle my grandfather's karma with that of this little town.

I will probably not mention the fuzzy bazillapedes to my landlady, although she is fascinated by every aspect of this house. It was built by her grandmother, who kept her writing desk in the very spot my computer now sits.