Saints and Spiders

An intimate essay on the relationship between childhood, spiders and the space in which they inhabit!

My father taught me to never be afraid of spiders. He would tell me ‘Imagine how they feel Cloe! You are a million times the size of them!’, as he held one in his hand. I liked to imagine being as small as a spider, looking up at something so otherworldly to me. Would I crawl away in fear, or accept them as a part of this space?

Can spiders feel amazement? I would like to think so. The presence of their emotion lies within a scuttle or a scamper. Their hunger is a web. Happiness is stillness in the corner of a human-less house.

If they cannot feel amazement, then they can certainly feel fear.

Whenever my father caught a spider, due to my terror, he would let them crawl around the safety of his hand. They would be the size of his palm (if you were to stretch their legs out) but he held no fear. Only wonder, or amazement. He never minded their company, and whenever there was a particularly large one, he would take to naming them. They always had names like John or Jane or Susie or Steve. He would turn them from creatures to friends. People you would see at the supermarket or in the pub ordering a pint. They became a bit more human that way, less of an outsider inside our home.

My first memory took place in the garden. In the little patch of grass that sat in front of the shed, we would have chairs to lounge in the sun. I remember sitting in a little pink one. The back had a cartoon character on it, faded from the sun’s touch.

Whilst looking down, I noticed red and green spiders everywhere. They scampered across my legs like flecks of ice cream against my skin. The kind you buy from an ice cream van outside of school. They dotted around like sprinkles, curious to the being sat upon their home. I imagined they slept under the shade of the dewy grass, waking up to silently greet a stranger. The interaction felt like a treaty of mutuality. A small body allowing the passage of even smaller bodies. Little explorers traversing the boundary that belonged outside of their world.

When I think of this memory, I fail to remember the time of day. I can picture it soaking in afternoon bliss, or shrouded in the evening shade. The memory is stuck, held still by the weight of recollection. People temper with the fragility of memory. Thought simmers around in the mind until they remember something drastic, or ecstatic, or a moment they cannot recall fully.

Memory is a spider’s mobility. It crawls around any surface, waiting for someone to finally discover it. Spider’s leave little webs that linger high on walls, they are hard to reach and dust away. When you see something that reminds you of a memory, it is hard to separate.

A spider’s web is integral to its very being. No matter the spider, the shared essential of them all is the spinning of a smooth silk. I had read a journal article, from Fritz Vollrath and Paul Selden, that stated ‘the structure of the web represents an intimate interaction between morphology and behaviour.’ In other words, a spider’s characteristics, personality if you will, shapes the architecture of a web. Depending on how tame, or driven by a hunt, they are, they can create a world of multi-dimensional webs. Like a thumbprint to us, each web is unique in sparkling structure. I suppose a spider and its silk, is a human and its memory. Each thought, action, experience, creates little webs of memory. Webs that are essential to our being; moulding the way in which we behave. The way in which we kiss and cook and create differs in each person. We take our webs and dust them on other people, pass them down to our children. Our ways of being decorate every home. Whenever I see a spider and its glorious silk, I think of my first memory.

 

I never had a nightlight. Only the safety of the light at the top of the stairs granted me comfort. Whilst in bed that night, I felt as though the spiders were still on me. They had multiplied, spreading like crumbs against my pink sheets. Our alliance had turned to invasion. They had boarded the safety of my skin, taking passage indoors.

I called out to my parents in a voice drenched in desperation. A voice that belonged to an anxious self, devoid of previous acceptance.

Their silhouettes stood gently like angels in the hallway. They always managed to stand so still outside my door, answering in faint voices. Perhaps they did not want to venture into my box of emotions, or they knew that I was actually okay.

Shrouded figures told me to go back to sleep, refusing to step in and check for invaders. I do not remember talking. The reason being is that I could not articulate myself, to tell them that spiders crawled under soft pyjamas. To tell them how they weaved between my legs and sheets, transforming themselves into a larger enemy. One that I could not see.

Maybe I had drifted off anxiously, held still by the limitations of memory. Maybe the spiders had whispered their motives in my sleep, to remain happily under warm sheets. Who was I to subject them to cold, damp grass? Perhaps the reason for my lack of remembrance was a lack of consciousness. The whole memory lays glazed in dreaminess, and I question the entirety of its reality. The moment in the garden seemed real, but multiplying spiders in my bed did not. It would explain my parents’ refusal to step into my room.

 

Children know little of boundaries. They stand susceptible to conflicting emotions that persuade them to think a certain way. Although I accepted the spiders whilst in their habitat, a notion of separation told me that they belonged to the outside. A boundary that humans can own and excavate. We embed ourselves in the soft things around us, moulding nature to our suitability.  

Human domination favours similarity. The closer an animal looks like us, the more inclined humanity is to treat it with respectability. We look at the spider, with its eight legs and an exoskeleton, and we deem it the enemy. An outsider that cannot possibly enter our home. If spiders took the form of a very small human, people would be more inclined to spare them. Perhaps society would build small homes to accommodate them. When people keep exotic tarantulas, or tiny jumping spiders as pets, they are subjected to a cage. An outsider trapped and regulated to fit the human need for control. Even when in unity, there is separation.

The fear of spiders is rooted in difference. Something so starkly unique from ourselves should belong to its own world, yet we traverse theirs continuously. Why is humanity compelled to rid something so otherworldly when they cross the boundary into our homes? Should we extend the right to shelter to beings that we cannot understand? Giving them a handful of our space would cost us nothing.

Whenever I see a spider, I let it roam. I let it indulge in exploration as if an astronaut. Who am I to confine it to its outside world, when I am also free to do so myself?

I will let it cast a gentle web, a home inside a home, and let it truly live.