Silkworms

(Every few months I remember that I haven’t updated this blog in a while and though my brain was filled to the brim with things to say, I couldn’t bring myself to. But I think it is time to come back again, to this first love of mine.)

When I was younger, I had a shoebox of silkworms. The box smelled like mulberry leaves and of the petrichor that rises when rain falls on summer evenings. I have a habit of projecting fantastical stories onto inanimate or non-human things and in that way, created stories for the clouds that hid dragons, for the tiny family that lived behind my books and that little box of silkworms. I had just started school in the year I got a box of silkworms. I imagined that they knew I loved them fiercely, that they felt sad on the evening I forgot them at school when my godmother picked me up, I hoped that they knew they would be safe. 

There were about six worms and at the time I was about six, they were pale grey tubes of softness that ate at the emerald leaves incessantly. Then one day they started to spin golden cocoons and this process filled me with curiosity and dread. I knew that they would not come out as beautiful butterflies with shimmering colours, that the time spent in this blanket of spun gold would not be too much of a showy transformation. And it’s only now, in my final year of university that I’m starting to understand the point of it all. Transformation does not have to be this shift to astounding beauty. It is enough to change and be better off for it.

A small change can feel like a miracle.

 My silkworms did not resist the change that was coming, they didn’t try to put off the spinning of the cocoons or resist emerging, as moths with powdery wings and they did not stop to say goodbye when the box was placed outside in the garden so they could fly away. So why am I resisting the changes that come naturally? Why do I cling to the cocoon of golden silk?

Surely, I have grown wings by now.

[Images from: Gardening Know How; Pinterest]