Tiny Moments of Grace . . .

On Sunday, Faire was a little overcrowded; it was possible, at any given moment, to be surrounded by twenty people who would stand just eight inches from you, flashing their cameras in your face and barely allowing any movement. I had a lot of good interactions, but I was feeling a little wilted from a few bad ones, people who seemed to think it was fun to come to the Faire just to be rude to the performers there. I definitely needed a reminder of how wonderful it was to be doing what I do every weekend.

Just after makeup touch-ups were finished at the shack, I left to go on my walk-about time: the only time during the day when I can leave the glen and go anywhere else I choose on the Faire site. As I passed the shack, I noticed a huge, beautiful dragonfly, caught in a spiderweb, dead. This seemed like the last straw in a difficult day, and I felt myself tear up. I know it's a natural cycle of life, that the dragonfly had probably killed it's share of spiders before meeting its eventual fate, and the spider needs to eat too, but . . . it made me very sad. Just a few weeks before, Tegan had brought me a tiny dying dragonfly, and we had both held it gently as it expired, wherafter she had taken it and buried it gently.

I went out and tried to center myself, finding a little garden spot I loved to hide in by the Lord Mayor's Forum Stage, wrapped around a pole hung with a beautiful creeping vine. I had just settled in when I saw four dragonflies or more flitting about the pine bushes near me. I reached out in awe, and one of them promptly landed on the back of my hand. Just like that, I was steward of a little piece of beauty.

Several children had gathered, and I very gently showed them the dragonfly, a medium-sized Saffron-winged Meadowhawk, most likely. They looked at me with faces that probably mirrored my own, full of wonder and delight. It stayed for quite awhile, and every once in a while it would cock its head, and I would respond with a head tilt of my own. I heard a boy ask, "Can she talk to bugs?" to which his father replied, "Of course she can. Look."

After several moments the dragonfly took wing once again, but it returned, and one little girl remarked, "You made a friend." I was so full of joy and awe in that moment that I needed nothing else. It was as though the universe was saying It's all right. Just breathe. The dragonfly finally departed for good, but it stayed with me long after it was gone.