Yesterday I went out into the back yard. I was standing on the porch when the sight of a praying mantis caught my eye. Ah, August, the insects that I love the most begin to mature and become visible. The sounds of the crickets and cicadas signal the changing of the seasons and the appearance of big spiders building webs in the crevices of the house, of walking sticks and the occasional appearance of praying mantis.

It was late in the afternoon and the heat was intense, there he was, perched on top of some clothes I'd hung out to dry on the railing. I immediately went to get my camera and this little fellow posed like a model. Why did he have to light on the purple dishrag?



I don't know much about my camera, so I had to fiddle around with the right setting. I went to the flower setting when I realized that this bug was going to let me get close. I was a bit surprised at the way he cocked his head and watched me as I hovered around him, snapping shot after shot. I continued to get closer and closer. What a magnificent mystery these animals are.

I looked up praying mantis on the National Geographic website and here's what they had to say: "By any name, these fascinating insects are formidable predators. They have triangular heads poised on a long "neck," or elongated thorax. Mantids can turn their heads 180 degrees to scan their surroundings with two large compound eyes and three other simple eyes located between them.

Typically green or brown and well camouflaged on the plants among which they live, mantis lie in ambush or patiently stalk their quarry. They use their front legs to snare their prey with reflexes so quick that they are difficult to see with the naked eye. Their legs are further equipped with spikes for snaring prey and pinning it in place.

Moths, crickets, grasshoppers, flies, and other insects are usually the unfortunate recipients of unwanted mantid attention. However, the insects will also eat others of their own kind. The most famous example of this is the notorious mating behavior of the adult female, who sometimes eats her mate just after—or even during—mating. Yet this behavior seems not to deter males from reproduction.

Females regularly lay hundreds of eggs in a small case, and nymphs hatch looking much like tiny versions of their parents."

Whenever I see a praying mantis I take some good luck for myself. I feel lucky that I walked out the door the minute I did. Lucky that the mantis didn't jump away off into the thick green plants below. I was lucky that he posed for me in a languid, unhurried manner and lucky that the mantis resonates with me. all his and her kin. This insect is a part of my life, my chidhood and my adult life.
I've always been taught by those around me that these are good insects because they eat lots of other insects. Otherwise I'm sure I would have been terrified of them.

The praying mantis is a harbinger of autumn. Here in the South, we don't see a mantis until August because they're so small, they hop around unnoticed in our gardens until one day there they are waiting to have their pictures taken.

Years ago, in my former life, I lived in a charming little home out in the country. The house had a nice front porch with wooden columns and steps. That porch was where I stayed in the morning and the afternoon. I had a vine growing over it and a brick path from the porch to the driveway. I had grasses, boxwoods and flowers of all kinds surrounding it.
The children were my life. I taught them at home for years, all four of them. Our summers were endless, really, or seemed to be so. The other children started back to school in the middle of August, but I didn't have any notion of holding classes when the days were so hot and summer was still in full swing.
I waited and we, the children and I ignored the rest of the world. We lived our languid lives in the hammock with books, swimming at the neighbors pool, playing in the sand pile, sleeping late, baking bread and reading, reading, reading and playing without goals or objectives.
We had a couple of window units for air conditioning which I hated. I felt closed off from the world then they were roaring, spewing out welcomed frigid air. I lived for the day when I could turn them off and open the doors and windows and turn on the attic fan.
I could tolerate heat in those days. We all could.
So around the middle of August and almost always by the first of September the air conditioners went off for good and the wonderful noises and smells of late summer were ours.
The nights were so black out in the country, the sky was jeweled, and the relief from the heat was like being let out of joil.
On the front porch was a light. It hung down from it's fixture right in the center of the porch. It was a pretty fixture ad did the nicest thing for the light inside it. It caused the light to emanate so that you could be driving along
On a dark moonless night and there back off the road a bit if you turned your head just right you saw in the distance a beacon of warmth gracefully splintered through the beveled glass.
My exhusband farmed and was a banker for the first 12 years of our marriage. He was rarely home, so I enjoyed a great deal of independence. I missed him, I longed for a companion in my marriage, but I managed to find comfort in my home and in my children.
One night, and why I remember this night I really don’t know. My memory lies to me, my memory works in milestones. It is the only way I can make sense of my past is to lay out the steps or the stones I hopped to over the years.
One night in September, late, late summer, I’d put the children to bed, or sent them to their rooms to read and play quietly before going to sleep. I was alone downstairs. The house was open, that is, the doors and windows were open and the attic fan was on, drawing in warm evening air.
I walked through the front room of the house, stepping lightly on the cool hardwood floor, past the tall weary windows that stretched from floor to ceiling. There were dim lamps on in the house and the front porch light was gleaming.
I often sat alone of the steps of my front porch where I counted my lush pots of geraniums as among my closest friends. I groomed them at night, gently snapping off yellowed leaves and spent blossoms. They awaited my coming.
If I ever saw God face to face it was on these nights. I sat, staring at the stars and the black sky and told God I was lonely.
“Belong,” a voice replied.
“To what?” I asked.
“Belong.”
I was beginning to understand what September meant. September means that children grow up, go to school, live their lives. The smell of number 2 pencils and rubber erasers brought on a melancholy that no geranium could speak to. The September I loved because the September I dreaded as the children grew.
That night after I’d heard all I cared to hear from talking stars and demanding flowers, I stood and placed my fingers into the handle on the white warn wooden screen door then stopped. Silenced.
A walking stick.
It behaved much like the mantis I saw last week. It was unafraid. Not just unafraid. It was bold, showing off, proud; as if he knew he was stunning, rare and beautiful; as if he’d been sent there as a harbinger, announcing the truth about September and children leaving and lonliness.
That’s all. That’s all I remember about that night. It’s not much in the telling, but then, in the light, surrounded by darkness and the noises of late summer, it was a milestone, a step, a memory of something I don’t fully understand.