The Thanksgiving Butterfly

"They seemed to have come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods." - Edith Wharton.

I would have to admit that it was one of our less traditional Thanksgiving days. My family is not much for celebrating any holiday in a big-time way except for Christmas. So over the years that we have known each other, we usually visit my husband's family for Thanksgiving and Easter.

After my husband's father died just before Christmas in 2010, leaving a widow who is several years his junior, we continued our tradition of visiting for Thanksgiving. We would either go out to eat somewhere (not always on the actual holiday day) or cook a traditional meal at her house.

When we called to check in on her a few weeks ago, our relative was not feeling well, and a number of worrisome events were occurring in her family, most of whom are far away, across the country. She was not up to celebrating the holiday with us, she said; in fact, she strongly encouraged us to make other plans for the day.

So my husband and I got our heads together. He suggested we visit a local free community Thanksgiving meal instead. I upped the ante: why didn't we find ALL the free local holiday meals we could, and hit them all? So we searched the Internet, and came up with several. We agreed we'd go to as many as we could.

Last week, we visited one (a ham meal) at a church in Warriors Mark on Tuesday; two days later, we hit the one (a turkey meal) at a church in Stormstown. And on this day, we drove up to Bellefonte to enjoy a very nice Thanksgiving dinner (turkey and all the trimmings) at the Knights of Columbus hall. So we, the cast-outs and uninvited, had not just ONE Thanksgiving dinner, but THREE!

Oh, and we reviewed them all afterwards, of course, among ourselves. The desserts were best at the first one, the main meal was quite good at the second, and the third one was the charm: everything was delicious and they had possibly some of the best stuffing we'd ever had in our lives! What a treat. (And yes, we made donations where they let us, which is to say, at two out of the three; after all, we were not raised by wolves!)

And after our meal on this day, we stopped at a new trail along Spring Creek, not far from the spillway and the rusty bridge, for a Thanksgiving day hike. The trail begins at Rock Road and runs along Spring Creek for a little more than a mile to its terminus by the fish hatchery at Shiloh Road.

It is an easy hike on a mostly flat grade, a lightly graveled pathway between the creek and the trees. We meandered our way over, taking our time, walked along the creek at the other end, and then began to make our way back to our car.

"BUTTERFLY!" my husband suddenly cried out. And I looked to see, thinking he was making it up, or had been fooled by a leaf. The high temperature for the day was in the low 40s, and the nights have been quite cold, sometimes below freezing; in short, it was no weather for butterflies!

But there it was, against all odds, a yellow soldier, flittering drunkenly along the path, where it sat down on some leaves to rest. My husband wandered closer for a look and I whipped out my camera to photograph this (apparently quite hardy) clouded sulphur. For this may be a first: have we EVER seen a butterfly on Thanksgiving day?

Now, some of you who have read my journal and looked at my pictures know the special significance of butterflies to me. When I was a very little girl in Sunday school, and the world was full of magic and wonder, our teacher asked us each to think of something that would remind us, every time we saw it, of God's deep and abiding love. Of course, I picked the butterfly, the most beautiful and magical creature I could think of. So you can only imagine what this special visitor meant to me on this day.

Was it a rather strange Thanksgiving day for us? You bet, it was. We did not visit family. We did not see friends. We did not cook a meal ourselves, or go to a fancy restaurant. But we were together, and we remembered our blessings, and we were thankful.

For all of the everyday miracles. For family. For friends and loved ones. For cats. For meaningful work, and awesome people to work with. For the great outdoors. For music. For my camera. For good health. For books. For movies. For faith and hope and joy. For community Thanksgiving meals. ;-) For all of these simple gifts. . . .

And yes, of course, a special shout-out to the best and most unexpected Thanksgiving day guest, whom we would not have run into had our plans unfolded in any other way than the way they actually did: Thank you for the butterflies.

The song: Alison Krauss and Yo Yo Ma, Simple Gifts.