Photo credit: allspossible.org.uk
Grandmother Spider watched the newcomer weave her elaborate web.
Jaconda spent days making complicated swirls, decorated with iridescent moon-dew and tiny buds.
Grandmother checked her own web. Symmetric, stable, taut in the right places.
“What say you, Grandmother? Is it not beautiful?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. But aren’t there too many gaps?”
Jaconda snorted. “You wouldn’t understand. It’s daring, new. Yours is practically invisible. Everyone will prefer mine.”
Indeed, everyone admired it, for weeks, as Jaconda slowly starved.
Meanwhile Grandmother savored every juicy meal. For her web wasn’t designed to be admired. It was designed to catch flies.
Word count: 100. Written for this week’s Friday Fictioneers challenge, hosted by the wonderful Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. Click on the link to see other stories written based on the original photo prompt, below.
This is my first post in a while, after taking a longer-than-expected break over the holidays. So HELLO again everyone! I was intending to make my first post about my New Year’s resolutions, but… Well, my initial goals about getting super organized and being crazy productive and a stickler about prioritizing? Not meeting 100% success on that so far, between work during the day and wine during the evening. 🙂 Ah well, I still have time to turn it around. In the meantime, it’s nice to be back!
Photo © Victor and Sarah Potter
Tales from Eneana 
I had a “Grandmother Spider,” too.
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Ah yes, a different take, but true. I almost called mine something else, like Mother Spider, since she isn’t really a “goddess” per se. Or is she… ? Hm. 🙂
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Welcome back. Good post to start the year with. Practicality over vanity every time.
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Yep, that was what I was thinking. The old ways are often the good ways.
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Very nice; everybody has an practical female in his history. I wonder, though, if Jocana was happy with having beauty to go with her hunger.
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I think most folks are lucky to get even a single practical person – female or male – in their history! My guess is that Jaconda felt more justified and self-satisfied than anything else; some people would rather starve for their principles than admit that their elders may be right in this one instance.
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Poor Jaconda – what a pity her grandmother didn’t teach her better.
Susan A Eames at
Travel, Fiction and Photos
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Some people won’t learn, except the hard way, especially when they’re young. Thanks for commenting!
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Happy New Year, Joy! Nice to be reading you again 🙂 What lovely imagery you create her, the words are spell binding. And quite a lesson too – beauty should stay where beauty is needed, but when it comes to putting food on the table, just do what works! Lovely take on the prompt
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Hi Lynn, nice to “see” you again, too! Glad you liked the piece; I wasn’t sure about it. And yes, beauty and “modern” are good as far as they go, but practicality has certain advantages too!
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Especially when you’re hunting! Sorry for the late reply, Joy. Spending more time away from the blog these days.
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No worries, I’ve been busy with non-blogging things too. Finally feeling like I’m making some progress on my To Do list, though – hooray!
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I do love a list! Such a feeling of satisfaction, ticking off those items. I have been known to add something I’ve already accomplished that wasn’t on the list originally, just to show myself how much I’ve achieved. Positves all round 🙂
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That’s exactly the problem I have with my electronic to-do list program: when I check something off, it just disappears, and all I can see is what’s still left to do (and usually, is overdue). Not quite as satisfying as a paper list with a bunch of crossed-off lines.
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True – a paper list is the most satisfying. Just occasionally, old school is best 🙂
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I printed off a to-do list for all the things necessary for my dinner party this weekend (and especially, in what order to do everything). It was immensely satisfying to check each item of the list!
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Haha! So love a list! Did you colour code it too 🙂
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No color coding, I’m afraid. My Todoist online system does color code for priority, but I have a hard time figuring that out. Something that’s a “3” priority now will become a “1” priority as the deadline approaches, and there’s no way to automate that.
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Ooh, sounds complicated! I know what you mean, priorities can change as a deadline approaches
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I’m all about the built for purpose structures. Substance over style as poor Jaconda found out.
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Thanks Varad! Yes, it seems like Jaconda might have paid more attention to why the traditional craft had been done that way for so long: for its purpose, of course.
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The wisdom of age and experience. Great tale. Maybe Jaconda ought to reconsider his objectives… 🙂
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I agree, it seems that Jaconda doesn’t have much time left to learn the value of the old ways. Thanks for reading!
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Welcome back, Joy. Good to see your stories again. Grandmother spider got to be a grandmother for good reason. Sometimes the young fail to appreciate the wisdom of the old. Oh well. Less competition for food for Grandma.
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It’s so often the case, yes: the young think they have some new exciting idea that nobody has thought of before, and it doesn’t occur to them that their elders already thought of it, or why they might have rejected it! Granted, the elders can be pretty fuddy-duddy and need a kick in the pants sometimes too; this time it just happened that practicality won. Thanks for coming by, Eric!
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Wow, lovely writing–both prose and theme. Glad I checked out your blog.
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Glad you enjoyed it, thanks so much for stopping by!
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Dear Joy,
A lesson for Jaconda. Some things shouldn’t be updated. Welcome back. 😀
Shalom,
Rochelle
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Glad to be back, thanks, Rochelle! And yes, exactly — some things can use an artistic makeover and some really need to be left alone. A bright, colorful, really visible spider web? What fly is stupid enough to fly into *that*?
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Welcome back, Joy and Happy New Year.
Yes, bells and whistles are fine, if they don’t hinder the necessary… The young should stop dissing the “old”…
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Thanks Dale – Happy New Year to you too!
Yes exactly — “new” can often be an improvement, but “new for the sake of new” should be examined closely, to make sure it still meets the basic functionality of the old!
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Thanks! 😘
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Superbly written. I could totally imagine this, experience talks…
Click Here to see what Mrs. Dash Says
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And yet, sometimes youth doesn’t listen. Well, maybe she’ll start listening now. Thanks for reading!
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What a lovely tale, and with such a powerful message to boot! Welcome back!
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Thanks, it’s great to be back – and thanks for the nice comment, I’m glad you enjoyed it!
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hopefully, they’ll find a middle ground somewhere. 🙂
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Perhaps, although I don’t think Grandmother Spider is looking to change. Her old ways work perfectly fine. Thanks for reading!
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Ha, nice! “Practical” is definitely the way to go here 🙂
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Exactly, Ali! Sometimes new ideas are just what’s needed, and sometimes… Well, you should really think about why everyone’s been doing it the same way for so long before randomly changing important elements of it, like making the spider web super visible to the bugs you’re trying to trap!
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Style over substance. Listen to Grannie Jaconda!
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Yep, style is great, but substance put food on the table – literally. Thanks, Keith!
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Exellent parable, beautifully told.
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Thank you, that was the feel I was going for; it’s nice to hear you thought it worked!
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Poor Jaconda! Her Art movement would have died with her.
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I feel a little bad for her too — all that creativity! Maybe the art movement can go in a slightly different direction and still survive, like one that doesn’t rely on the same web both being artistic AND catching dinner.
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Hehehe. This was great, beautiful writing and a fun story. Design is important, but it has to be functional. Otherwise it would be art, and then it didn’t have to be functional. Not that design isn’t an art form, err.. I think I got entangled in some web here… But speaking about webs, maybe Jaconda drinks too much coffee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_psychoactive_drugs_on_animals 😉
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Thanks G, glad you enjoyed it! I’m afraid I’m coming off as a bit of a traditionalist, which is weird, since usually I’m the opposite. But I’ve had a few instances lately of people at work wanting to change things just for the sake of changing things and being new and modern. They say they’re thinking outside the box but I wonder if they even know where the box is, or why it got built that way in the first place. Creativity in design is great, but it can’t overpower function, or… well, it won’t work, duh!
Fascinating link– wow, caffeine really does mess up those spiders!
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Grandma wants to watch out—Jaconda is getting desperate…
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Grandmother Spider would probably share her dinner, if Jaconda could swallow her pride long enough to ask. Thanks, Jane!
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Grandmothers are generous like that. Usually 🙂
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Funny, I wasn’t thinking of her as being Jaconda’s actual grandmother, but it works that way too. In this culture in Eneana (Layor), they call any elder woman (especially goddesses and/or those in fables) Grandmother or Mother as a sign of respect. For instance, that one woman in the village who basically takes care of everyone and knows everyone’s business is called Mother Soup.
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A spidery morality tale. Well done 🙂
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Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
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“Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.”
David Mamet
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True! And sometimes all you need is old age, experience, and the wisdom to listen to that experience: no treachery needed. Thanks for reading, Maureen!
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Oh the wisdom of experience… Not all that glitters has worth
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It can take a lot of experience to come to that conclusion though; more so for some than for others. Here, it’s a lesson hard learned. Thanks for stopping by!
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I feel that this may be the age old story between the dreamer and the pragmatist, very well written with spiders. A good allegory.
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Everything is better with spiders, right? Hm. Well, a good allegory is, at least. I normally side with the dreamers, but I’m taking a turn showing the old-time pragmatist’s perspective this time. I suspect the older I get, the more often I’ll do that, lol…. Thanks for stopping by!
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😉 Nice allegory there.
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Thanks for saying so – glad you liked it!
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I am gathering a collection of spiders’ webs. And they are all different. But what sticks in my memory are the webs that lined the roads in Glastonbury one very early, late September, misty morning several years back (before phones had cameras. And heading for the Tor, for yet another morning climb, I had not brought a camera with me. Drats.
I do like your story. Indeed, functionality versus beauty.
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I had to do a double-take to realize you were collecting pictures of them, not the actual spider webs. Goodness, I must need more coffee this morning! Spider webs are fascinating; they make a great subject for photography. And yes, it seems like you never have your camera with you when you see the most amazing things…
Glad you liked the story. I think most things can be functional and also beautiful, if designed with that in mind. But some designs seem to forget that the thing actually has to be *used* and not just looked at. I was just amused by the idea that a spider would decorate a web without considering that this is basically a “watch out– sticky web here!” sign to any bugs flying by. 😀
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I have a wonderful collection around the house (really must get the duster out!) But I do allow the smaller house spiders, and I don’t have a problem with the usual type of household flies. The only spiders I really don’t like are the hunters. No webs, and they’re carnivorous. Our largest UK spiders are hunters. I began taking an interest in them when I started writing Feast Fables.
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We get a lot of black widows here, and I have a zero-tolerance policy for them inside. When I had a garage, it was impossible to keep them out, and I had to be super-careful not to accidentally bring them into the house. It got to the point where I would get paranoid about them getting inside the car… (shiver)
Other spiders are fine with me, but I tell them to keep high up on the walls or ceiling. If they’re stupid enough to get to the floor, they’ll learn that my cat refuses to sign the no-aggression treaty. Worse, she constantly violates my ban on torture. Poor little spiders…
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Joy, wonderful point of view story. Loved it.
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Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks so much for stopping by and commenting!
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Love this.. the wisdom of building for the purpose is what counts in the end… there is wisdom there.
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Well put, Bjorn. Thanks so much for commenting, and I’m glad you enjoyed it!
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Welcome back, Joy. The moral of your story I’d say is be practical where it counts and you’ll do well. I hope Jaconda can fill in the holes before she dies. It doesn’t look hopeful. Good writing. 🙂 — Suzanne
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Thanks Suzanne, it’s good to be back! Jaconda still has time to rethink her strategy, but I’m afraid she’s letting her stubborn pride rule the day.
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