The other morning my toddler and I were washing our hands in the bathroom when a small something flitted out from behind the mirror.
“Bug! Bug! Bug!” he cried, and nearly fell off the stepstool.
Wary of inciting any nascent phobia insects—a phobia I’m half-sure lies dormant within most of us, entomologists excepted—I stilled him and we watched as the miller moth fluttered around the bathroom light. (Eventually, I “got it” with a bathroom towel.)
Miller moths are seasonal visitors—they travel each spring from the eastern plains up to the mountains in search of flowers. Along with the leafing trees and rising temperatures, the moths are a sure sign of spring in the Front Range.
The moth incident was all my son could talk about for two days, telling my wife repeatedly, “Bug in bathroom! Daddy got it!”
The whole episode struck me as delightful in part for how his powers of observation aligned just so with the seasonal return of the miller moths.
It was a reminder that we are—all of us—getting older, but the seasons remain, tracing loop-de-loops around us. I’m excited to see what happens next spring.
Taylor Coe 