It was there in the wee hours when I rose to rinse my face, and then go into my quiet room to sit in meditation with a pot of tea, the wisp of incense smoke and a beeswax candle.
Two hours later, it was still there, just a tiny guy, about the size of a half-used pencil eraser. I watched for a while, my eyes going back and forth from the mirror to the tub as I arranged my day face and brushed my teeth and hair. Resolutely the tiny guy would begin an ascent up the slick slope of porcelain, make it about one-third of the way to the rim, and then slide back. There it would rest and wait, but within minutes it would begin again, this time about a quarter-inch from where it had tried and failed. This action was painstakingly repeated. I guessed that the tiny guy had gone into the abyss to get a drink of water, maybe sipping from the dredges of a shower or a bath that had collected around the edge of the drain. I left the bathroom, saying a prayer for the tiny guy’s endeavor.
At noon, it was still there, this time about a quarter of the way around the tub, moving from left to right.
Around four, I returned to clean up before making dinner, and the tiny guy was still at it. It had achieved the circumference of one-half of the tub’s length and was directly at the opposite end from where it had begun. I thought of leaving it alone once more to be in charge of its own destiny, but the futility and the eventual outcome was more than I could endure. The spider did not know there was no way out, but I did, unless it was down the drain, into the sewage line, back out into the world at large as a victim of drowning.
Thus, I took a piece of toilet tissue and set it in the spider’s path as it began, once more, to try and climb. It sensed the unfamiliar paper and backed away. I tried again. Same result. But on the third attempt as I said, “Give it a try. Might be worth it in the end,” the spider gingerly put its two front legs onto the white square and I lifted it. While the tiny guy dangled precariously for the second that it took for me to set the tissue on the floor of the bathroom, it hung on. Once on the level surface of the tile, it took several hesitant steps, then rested and waited. I waited too, sitting on the edge of the tub to see if my rescue attempt had been the right thing to do.
Then, the spider moved as if in slow motion, lifting one leg then another, as if trying to find its footing on this new terrain. Within an inch, it had gained the thicker, warmer comfort of the terry cloth bath mat and I felt certain that the tiny guy would now find its way, wherever it was meant to go, whatever it was meant to do.
“Go catch some bugs,” I said as I left the room, “and, by the way, thank you for allowing me the honor of giving you a hand.”
~LJ