Tiny White Moths

After dark, the clans gather to blow off steam

Note: Dan Szczesny is an award-winning New Hampshire journalist, author, and speaker. His latest work, The White Mountain, along with all other things Dan can be found at his website here. For the entire month of November, Dan published daily “live essays,” such as this one, on his Facebook feed. We are grateful for his permission to reprint some of these essays here at Monadnock Underground over the next few weeks. Dan has recently announced that his next book, a collection of essays about parenthood (like this one!), will be released in early June 2020. You can find the original post, from November 24, here. — CJD

After toasts and champagne, after enormous portions of food and sweets, after the ritual area has been cleaned and everyone has switched to evening clothes, after dark and after the tiny lights illuminate the courtyard and outdoor dance pavilion, the clans gather to blow off steam.

A ritual of its own, the post-ceremony dance party begins — that explosive released of relief after the anxiety of the solemn rites; an accepted, purposeful descent into madness, as Nietzsche would say.

“Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music,” he wrote.

But I prefer Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s observations on marriage and music, that love is an understanding of the rhythm of movement — like two dancers, each perfectly in sync with the other, barely touching yet moving to the same beat.

Before heading over to the dance hall, I have a few extra minutes to spare and take a slow walk through the now empty marriage grounds. On the far side of the field, a constructed waterfall splashes into a lit basin and tables and chairs lay turned this way and that — the area is now a field of past commitment, a disheveled monument to your uncle and new aunt’s future.

But a new group of humans have emerged on to the field.

This place is now the rightful territory of the children; they have annexed this piece of land for their own tribe. A group of them, including you baby, are playing soccer. For goals, on one side of the field is a recycling bin on its side and on the other side is a play crib, also on its side. (I instinctively take a peek into the crib to make sure, you know, the older kids haven’t overturned a baby along with the goal. All clear!)

How remarkable that all of you from all different points on the map have come together for a pick up game of soccer, as children all around the world do. Content that you are safe and occupied, I prepare to head off toward the cake and thumping music. But you have other ideas.

“Daddy!” you shout, gripping my arm, bouncing and giggling. “Play with us, play soccer!”

I hesitate, but really only for a split second. Given the choice between a game of pick up soccer on a warm Texas evening with a gaggle of little kids dressed in suits or dancing with the adults, well, the kids will win that coin toss every time. The adults won’t even know I’m missing.

“Right,” I say, “let’s play!”

The parents of your new friend, Simon, show up and you shout “Adults against kids!” and it is on! Somewhere behind us, Bollywood thumps the beat of our kicks and the kids swarm when one of the adults has the ball. There’s shouting and shoving and all those nice clothes get grass stained, and the ball even finds its way into a net or two.

After a while, Simon wants to go dance and the other kids drift off, and you drape yourself dramatically over the play crib, like some 1930s actress swooning because she didn’t get her way.

“Daddy, they don’t want to play!”

“I know, baby, but some of them want to dance. Everybody can do a different thing.”

But you’re pouting. No meltdown, but the potential is there.

“I have an idea, come here.”

I lift you onto my shoulders and you cackle and I bounce to the beat as we make our way to the dance floor. But it’s not in the cards today. “Daddy! Wait! Hurry, put me down!”

There near the front of the pavilion, dozens of tiny white moths are swarming, flitting about near the lights. Some drift down into the grass while other do crazy loops over our heads. I put you down, and you say, “Daddy, let’s get them, come on!”

And that’s our evening — you and I chasing moths in the night. “Look daddy!” Very slowly you open your cupped hands to reveal a single moth. In the light, the moth flutters away, up, up into the dark sky. We stand and watch for a moment, until the creature is gone.

“It’s time to head out, baby,” I say.

You take a deep breath. “Can you carry me, daddy?”

I do. I carry you back to your mother, back to our car, back to the hotel and then back home. All the while, the dancers dance and the music rises and falls, and finally drifts into silence. We’re going home.