Eden had missed the spring term because of her long illness. Remembering the inauspicious beginning of that school year, the Averys decided to have her repeat. So she re-entered sixth grade, not as last year’s failure but as a celebrity, imbued with the aura of one returned from the dead. A better example of making a virtue out of necessity would have been hard to find.

What pleased her most, though, was being allowed unrestricted activity, for it returned her to the skating rink and the companionship of Debbie Rabin despite their no longer being classmates. She had no idea how important those ties to Debbie would eventually be.

The girls continued going to the home of one or the other after school.  Only now they did their separate work. One day, Eden was introduced to another of nature’s works of art.

Josh stood on a chair, pencil in hand, looking intently at an object they couldn’t see.

“Mom said not to write on the ceiling,” Debbie said.

“I know. I’m waiting for your big behind to come in range.”

“What are you doing?” Eden asked.

“Ah! At last someone with intellectual curiosity,” he said.

“Poor Edie. She should use it more wisely.”

“You’ll be sorry,” he said, holding the pencil ominously close to Debbie’s face.

“This is all very entertaining,” said Eden, “but I still want to know what you’re doing.”

“OK, come over here, but be careful.”

The girls came closer. “Look just beyond my finger, but don’t touch.”

Eden was the first to see the tiny spider, its legs busily engaged in some invisible project.

“What’s he doing?” she asked.

“Spinning, I guess,” Josh said. “That’s what spiders do, isn’t it?”

“But I don’t see a web.”

“Neither do I, but something has to be holding it up there, doesn’t it?”

Demonstrating the correctness of Josh’s observation, the spider descended a few inches.

“Watch this,” Josh said, “and don’t touch.”

He poised the pencil.

“Keep your eyes on the spider.”

Six eyes focused on the spider. Slowly it moved horizontally, then returned to its former position. Then in the opposite direction and back again. Eden stole a look upward to make sure that Josh wasn’t blowing at the spider.  She saw the pencil moving slowly side to side.

“Get it?” he asked, seeing her upturned face. “It’s hanging from a thread.”

“Anyone could have told you there has to be one. But I can’t see it.”

“I can’t either.” He moved the pencil again. “Amazing, it must be a hundred times longer than its body.  Probably took a few minutes to spin. So thin you can’t see it, yet strong enough to hang from. Isn’t that a work of art?”

~~~~~~~~~~

Two years passed. The Rabins were standing at one of the many overlooks on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Looking at their maps, Josh and Debbie estimated their location, in North Carolina seventy miles south of the Virginia line, just inside Pisgah National Forest. Years earlier, hearing the question “Are we there yet?” once too often, Max and Esther had decided road maps were the answer. At fifteen and thirteen, the children were reliable navigators.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Rabins’ was one of those blessed homes in which nothing significant ever went wrong. Both parents were happy in what they were doing, happy with each other, and happy with their children. Esther had no misgivings about suspending her job as a statistician to raise the children. On Max’s income as a biochemist, they made their home in West Mount Airy, a liberal Philadelphia community, and numbered the Averys among their friends.

~~~~~~~~~~

Mid-October was not a typical vacation time for families with children in school.  Still, traffic on the parkway was heavy, drawn by the renowned fall foliage. The lateness of the Jewish High Holidays that year gave the Rabins only a small window for the trip. To make it, right after Yom Kippur, the children had had to bargain for four days off. Their deal was for each to present a report to their science classes.

For several minutes the children debated how far they could see across the valley below. According to the map, their line of sight passed through the northeast corner of Tennessee into the southwest corner of Virginia.

“I say Virginia,” Josh said.

“You can’t see that far. It’s miles away.”

“Look, dummy, don’t you see that line?”

“Who’re you calling dummy? What line?”

“There, on the other side of that tree.”

Debbie searched the trees for a few seconds before realizing she’d been had.

“Mom!  Do something about Josh.”

“OK, you two, time to go.” Esther adopted a mildly reproachful tone only because it seemed the right thing to do.

She was seated in the car before she realized that Josh had not moved from the overlook.

“Come on, Josh,” she shouted to him.

“He’s still looking at lines,” came a voice from the back seat, “all the way to California.”

“All right, Debbie, I heard you the first time,” Esther said. “Max, toot your horn. My voice doesn’t seem to carry.” Max did as asked, but without effect. Finally, Esther got out and walked to the parapet, expecting to find Josh reading the marker about the panorama. Instead, he was gazing absently into the distance. Instinctively, she kept her distance and said nothing. Although he must have heard her footsteps and her sudden stop, he did not turn. His face, which she saw in profile, displayed an intensity and wonder like she had never seen before.

A minute later Max got out of the car. “Stay here, Debbie,” he said, fearing trouble.

He could hardly believe his eyes. Someone’s crazy here, he thought, either the two of them or me. Their expressions were identical, but they weren’t looking at the same view. Josh’s gaze was on some point far away, Esther’s on Josh’s face.

“Am I interrupting?” Max asked after a discreet pause.

Esther turned to him with a finger on her mouth. “Shall we go, Josh?” she asked softly.

Josh spun around, shook his head a few times, and said: “Wow!”

“What?”

“I must have been in a trance or something.”

Esther squeezed Max’s hand.  Max took the cue.  He had no idea what was going on.

“What was that all about?” asked Debbie as they drove off.

“Nothing,” Esther said casually, “just enjoying the view. But we’d better move along.”

“Good,” Debbie answered, “for a moment I thought he had you staring at his state lines.”

The expected comeback did not materialize. Josh was looking out the window.

“A work of art,” he said absently.

“What?” Debbie asked.

“The view. I was hypnotized. Lucky you weren’t there. You could have pushed me over.”

“I may never get another chance.”

“I mean,” he continued, “I’ve seen so many landscape paintings, in the museum, and the ones we have at home. None of them are anything like that!”

“The colors are spectacular,” Esther said.

His enthusiasm validated, Josh went on: “You know, paintings have frames, they’re in rooms with walls and ceilings, they have titles and explanations, and they’re all so, well, two- dimensional. But this was all around me, to the left, to the right, over my head, up close, and as far away as I could see. And I felt right inside it, you know, not just looking at it.”

Something told Debbie to smother the wisecrack on the tip of her tongue.

After a minute of silence, Esther said: “That sounds like a beautiful experience, and I’m not being the least bit facetious.”

“It was. I still see it in front of me.”

“Not to the left or right?” asked Debbie, unable to restrain herself any longer.

“You know something, Miss Deborah, you have no soul and you’re incredibly dull.”

“Ahem,” said Max, “talking about soul makes me think of body, and mine’s crying out for food. Anyone with me?” Luckily they all were.

That night Josh dreamed he was in a planetarium. The dome was a panoply of chemical formulas in shades of yellow, orange, red, and purple. He awoke in a mood of elation.

With the help of a botany text and Max’s explanations, Josh wrote his science report on chlorophyll, its structure and function, and how its decay leads to the autumnal color changes. Green plants absorb carbon dioxide, use solar energy to synthesize complex chemicals, and release oxygen into the air. Animals eat these chemicals and breathe the oxygen, derive energy from their reaction, and exhale carbon dioxide for the plants to use again. What an amazing interactive system! What a glorious cycle of energy and life. Truly a work of art!

On the long drive home he daydreamed. He recalled the maggots in the garbage can, to which he too had instinctively reacted with disgust, until he gave them a second thought. No, a first thought; his initial reaction had been altogether without thought. Then they fascinated him. Fall foliage and maggots. So different, yet so alike. Both proclaimed life. You had to be a real clod not to appreciate the foliage, but didn’t the maggots, too, have a claim to beauty? Not that flies were anything to get ecstatic about, but the beauty lay in the concept, the design of process by transformation. Ah! Sometime he would write about that ― his own work of art.

“Wake up, Josh! That must be some dream, judging by your face.”

It was Debbie’s voice. Naturally, she wouldn’t let him enjoy his dream in peace, but that was OK. Even his pesky little sister was beautiful ― conceptually, of course ― in the way she added spice to his life. When they were older, maybe he’d share those thoughts with her.