a mother of a spider

Usually, I refer to spiders in the masculine, not the feminine. Interesting. I'm sure either Freud or Lacan can find some reason for this association.

However, this morning's kitchen visitor was a MOTHER of a spider. Normally I find these huge creepy-crawlies inhabiting my basement, and I hurriedly try to trap them and get them outside before some sort of midnight-crawling-across-my-face encounter.

(That has actually occurred, in Japan, when I awoke to find a huge dead spider carcass smashed on the pillow next to my ear. But living in Japan was much like indoor camping, with only a layer of plywood and a tatami mat separating me from all the insect and reptile wonders that often found their way through the crevices into my small rural home. Definitely not Suburbia.)

Anyway, I screamed so loud that I'm sure She-Ra heard me from across town (?!) and my children actually allowed themselves to be torn away from Saturday morning Batman cartoons (following Scooby Doo, naturally) to find out what in the world had made their mother holler so. They were taken by the sheer size of the arachnid and, when I finally got my wits about me and could search for a container into which I could trap the creature and release it into the Great Outdoors, their eyes widened with anticipation: Would the spider jump? Would it run faster? Would it bite? If it bit Mommy, would we have to call the 'ambulance man'? I could see the questions jump into their minds.

The spider did, in fact, jump--as soon as I put Kana's plastic school snack carrier over it, then I slammed the lid on and, certain that I could get this ugly thing outside without it making its way out somehow and biting my hand, we all rushed out to the porch and I released the spider in a six-foot free fall into a bed of hostas--an environment much less hostile, I'm sure, to the eight-legged population.

Then Kana declared:

-I sure hope you're going to clean that container, Mom.

And they promptly returned downstairs to the comfort and safety of their predictable Saturday morning animated dramas.