Moths are very ugly creatures. At least that is what I always thought until a reliable
source told me otherwise. When I was about five or six years old, my brother Joseph
and I stayed overnight at our Aunt Linda’s house, our favorite relative. She spoke to us
like adults, and she always had the best stories.
Joseph was only four years old, and still afraid of the dark, so Aunt Linda left the door
open and the hall light on when she tucked us in to bed. Joe couldn’t sleep, so he just
lay there staring at the ceiling. Just as I dozed off to sleep, he woke me up and asked,
“Jennie, what are those ugly things near the light?”(I had always liked that he asked me
questions because I was older and supposed to know the answers. I didn’t always
know the answers, of course, but I could always pretend I did.) He was pointing to the
moths fluttering around the hall light. “They’re just moths, go to sleep,” I told him.
He wasn’t content with that answer, or the moths near his night light, so the next time
my Aunt walked by the door he asked her to make the ugly moths go away. When she
asked why, he said simply, “Because they’re ugly and scary, and I don’t like them! ”She
just laughed, rubbed his head, and said, “Joe just because something is ugly outside
doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful inside. Do you know why moths are brown?” Joe just
shook his head.
“Moths are the most beautiful animals in the animal kingdom. At one time they were
more colorful than the butterflies. They have always been helpful, kind, and generous
creatures. One day the angels up in heaven were crying. They were sad because it
was cloudy and they couldn’t look down upon the people on earth. Their tears fell down
to the earth as rain. The sweet little moths hated to see everyone so sad. They decided
to make a rainbow. The moths figured that if they asked their cousins, the butterflies, to
help, they could all give up just a little bit of their colors and they could make a beautiful
rainbow.
One of the littlest moths flew to ask the queen of the butterflies for help. The butterflies
were too vain and selfish to give up any of their colors for neither the people nor the
angels. So, the moths decided to try to make the rainbow themselves. They beat their
wings very hard and the powder on them formed little clouds that the winds smoothed
over like glass. Unfortunately, the rainbow wasn’t big enough so the moths kept giving
a little more and a little more until the rainbow stretched all the way across the sky.
They had given away all their color except brown, which didn’t fit into their beautiful
rainbow.
Now the once colorful moths were plain and brown. The angels up in heaven saw the
rainbow, and became joyous. They smiled and the warmth of their smiles shown down
on the earth as sunshine. The warm sunshine made the people on earth happy and
they smiled, too. Now every time it rains the baby moths, who still have their colors,
spread them across the sky to make more rainbows.”
My brother sank off to sleep with that story and hasn’t feared moths since. The story
my aunt told us had been gathering dust in the back corners of my brain for years, but
recently came back to me.
I have a friend named Abigail who always wears gray clothes. She is also one of the
most kind and generous people I’ve ever met. When people ask her why she doesn’t
wear more colors she just smiles, that smile, and says, “Gray is my color.” She knows
herself and she doesn’t compromise that to appease other people. Some may see her
as plain like a moth, but I know that underneath the gray, Abigail is every color of the
rainbow.