Dear Butterfly
A summer reflection
I am reading by the pool on a late summer morning.
God pulls a cloud so long and thin across the sky it stretches like blinds over the beating heat of the sun. Grateful, I take my hat off and swirl my feet in the water.
Enthralled in the pages of my small book until a flash of color begs for my attention, I look up and turn. I find the flash has materialized— a beautiful black & yellow butterfly, a tiger swallowtail I later look up—sitting on the concrete. Its wings are slowly moving while it appears to drink the pool water that has spread like a river over the hot concrete floor.
It flies on, I keep reading—
until I hear a shrill coming from a toddler in the water. She is alerting the masses that the butterfly has returned. A gaggle of sopping wet children climb out of the pool to gather around it. I watch, too, delighted, as my adulthood drips off my shoulders, and I am returned to myself as a little girl. I am beholding beauty.
I watch a young girl sit down on the concrete criss-cross-applesauce style. She places her hands on her knees, her palms turned upward. She is preparing herself, saying: I am a safe place—you can land here—please come, butterfly.
In June, while my husband and I were in Chattanooga celebrating our one year anniversary, I took myself on a date to the aquarium for the sole purpose of the butterfly garden. We were going to go together until we looked up the cost of tickets (insane!) so he suggested I go while he catch a World Cup game in a bar. (This is marriage, in my experience, that two solitudes meet and protect each other.1)
I made my way to the top floor, past radiated tortoises and pools of stingrays, to the warm, humid penthouse where more than 1,000 butterflies were flitting and flying.
I watched the butterflies dance, swarm, land, fly. I felt returned to my childhood posture of unadulterated wonder.
Children and families and grandparents shuffled their way around this cozy, crowded room. I started noticing how some kids were walking around with butterflies on their fingertips. I wanted this, too, so I hovered near the butterflies, my heart whispering I am a safe place—you can land here—please come, butterfly. I waited. I took pictures. I zigged and zagged and made my way around the room several times—
until adulthood got in my way. I reasoned: How much time are you going to spend trying to get a butterfly to land on you? I considered: Are you wearing the right colors? Pursuing the right places? My self-awareness turned on me: You think these people are wondering where your family is? I decided: This is silly. Just take pictures and enjoy yourself.
Eventually, I left the butterfly garden, untouched by their tiny legs and thorax.
I put the bookmark in the pages and fold the book up, the clear polyester cover on the library book sticking to my legs where I rest it.
I am waiting with the little girl, hopeful for the butterfly to find her, giggling at her zen posture—until another girl in the pool swims up to the edge and intentionally splashes the butterfly, causing it to return to its nature as a flash.
“Hey!” the girl yells, “don’t DO THAT!” She stands and runs, pointing and chasing after the butterfly, but it has risen to the sky. It has left us with a longing to be touched— chosen?— by beauty.
The girl returns to the pool, and I return to my book, my adulthood, my reasoning.
This is one of my favorite quotes of Rilke, found in his Letters to a Young Poet— “that love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other, pg. 60.
Two solitudes meet and protect each other ❤️
Beautiful picture...