This is My Dance Space

The space isn’t that big, really. Large enough for me and the cat and sometimes a guest. A human guest, that is. We have others who don’t take up much room and are more like residents or seasonal visitors.

Just the other night, I watched a spider arrive and make his way, quite confidently, past the television, around the reading lamp, and up the stairs. He was sleeping in my bed when I found him later — the three of us startled at once.

He is not the first spider, nor the last. We have kitchen ones and cellar ones and the orb weaver who cured me of the phobia many years ago now.

I remember once, a small wren spent an afternoon on the screen porch the summer the hornets lived here; and there’s a family of mice who visit each winter, scurrying about in the space above my bed.

We make accommodations as we can, the all of us, with the accepted guidelines that This is my dance space and that is your dance space. The mouse in the kitchen was promptly directed outside. That spider in my bed? Eaten by the cat.

We’re all sharing this small space, it’s best to have manners and compassion…and ground rules.