It was the last days of summer, and a cloud of gloom followed my mother wherever she went. We had just come home to her, my sister and I, from Abu Dhabi, heavy hearts lifted by the sight of each other. I had said that we should go to Sagada, a little resort town in the Mountain Province, where I had been to a handful of times (most without my mother knowing, but that is another story). Cities take their toll, and we had wanted to go somewhere far away, together, to find some happiness.
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| Chunky the death moth (named such because of this author's ignorance regarding the true names of moths) overseeing the goings-on of the Kanip-Aw Lodge common room. |
We lived in a lodge overlooking the cliffs, and at night the common room fluttered with moths. When I had been little, on the nights we spent by the sea, I would attempt to kill moths for flying too near. "Don't!" said my mother then, "moths carry good luck." And I had taken care to never harm moths since then. Now I wonder if this is related to the myth of butterflies being souls of the dead. I wonder if butterflies and moths are, instead, messengers.
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