Moth Holes

 

As a child I was warned of moths.

I was warned of the way they can eat their way through clothes or leave holes in precious linen stored in chests.

It is an atavistic fear that has been taught throughout the ages.

Moths have steadily picked holes in the fabrics of civilisations as mighty nations crumbled to dust around them. They leave holes, spaces and ruin before they take wing and fly.

There have been holes in my life. Little things. Important things that I’ve lost. Things I couldn’t find. Missing things that have unsettled me.

I didn’t raise any alert. I keep quiet about the things that I could no longer find, thinking that I’d been careless or that perhaps my brother had taken them. Little treasures vanished and I said nothing. I didn’t want to make a fuss. I said nothing becoming suspicious of others instead.

I lost the small gold cross that I was given as a present for being a bridesmaid. I was troubled when I couldn’t find it in my old bedroom at my parents’ house. I wondered if I’d taken it to college and had lost it there. I grieved over its lost. It was the first necklace given to me. It was special. It meant something. Perhaps it had slipped away. I was sad to lose it.

I lost my bag of old sixpences. Nothing much I guess, but when The Teenager was a youngun and losing his baby teeth I had wanted to put such coins under his pillow. That had been my plan all along. Different old silver sixpences had been put under my pillow and I wanted to keep the tradition going. It was a little thing but it would have been special. The bag of coins was not to be found in my old wardrobe. I suspected my brother’s sleight of hand.

I lost my stamp collection and felt so sad about it that I gave the others I had recently collected away. The lost stamps were the heart of my collection. I’d particularly treasured them. Their loss meant I gave up stamp collecting. They featured the Bayeux Tapestry. I had all the stamps in one long unbroken line. But when I looked for them they were gone. I thought my exchange partner’s adopted son might have helped himself to them, after all, his father had taken my rug.

I lost a book one that I was using on my course. I thought that my boyfriend had taken it by mistake. We had a long argument about it. He gave in and gave me the book, but looked at me with different eyes from that moment on. And I now distrusted him too. Could that have been in part why I said no to him when he asked me to marry him?

Little things went missing. Nothing of great significance perhaps, but they were things I looked for and thought I’d lost. Their absence caused holes in my life and a little bit of worry and sadness.

There were holes in my fabric. Loss. Little things missing that brought down the rest and made me feel insecure. Things like the books I wanted to refer to when planning lessons, where could they have gone?

Recently I found the gold cross, the sixpences, the stamps and the book amongst other ‘treasures’ that I lost, together with certificates that proclaimed some passing merit in the world and which had caused me great worry when I couldn’t find them last year to verify my qualifications.

Unbeknown to me they’d been put into a box, and this box had been put into the attic by my father together with other boxes; as the things I’d once kept on the shelves inside my wardrobe were steadily replaced with stored linen and towels and moth balls.

I didn’t know.

So many things I’d looked for in my old room and could no longer find were in this box.

So many little things that had caused me to become a little estranged and suspicious about my brother, my boyfriend and that poor wild boy from Seattle were in this box.

I touch them now all too late. I have to keep them in a box because they no longer fit into the holes they’ve left behind, and it’s too late to undo the harm their absence caused.

Little things.

Nothing much.

Things that could have helped me to fly just a little.

 

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