The Butterfly Girl

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne

It was morning at the Arboretum. A brand new lotus was coming into bloom on the lily pond. Goldfinches were raising a ruckus near the treetops. I decided to check the pollinator garden for interesting bugs and blooms. As I headed down the path, I felt rather than saw an orange flutter near my feet. And that is how I almost stepped on a monarch butterfly.

I bent down to observe it more closely, and I noticed two things: 1) it was missing its left rear wing, and 2) it was a male (there was a black spot on the rear wing it did have). I'm not sure if it was born without the missing wing, or whether the wing was snatched off by a predator. But the butterfly wasn't doing too good a job of flying. It was going more sideways than up.

Before doing anything else, I took some pictures, of course. And then I offered him my finger to crawl aboard. And he did. I found I was almost holding my breath. I took some photos of him sitting on my hand, and I wondered quietly to myself if I'd ever held a live monarch butterfly before. Then I gently placed him atop a nearby orange and red bloom, where he immediately stuck his proboscis in and began sipping greedily. Good appetite!

The butterfly sat there a few minutes and then he fluttered up and off the bloom, heading straight for me, and landing on my shirt. I grinned to see him there, snapped a few more pictures, and admonished the butterfly that, No, it couldn't go along to work with me today! But it clearly seemed to want to! So I gently removed the butterfly from my shirt and placed him back on a bloom, watched him sit there looking happy for a few minutes, and then went on my merry way.

It is hard to describe the mixture of feelings that I had. First, absolute delight at having been sat on by a butterfly. That might be some sort of special blessing, I think. To have the status of Butterfly Girl conferred upon me by an actual monarch. It might be better than being a princess, even. And second, concern for the butterfly, of course, with its missing wing. Could it live? Would it have any quality of life? Could it learn to fly like that?

I do not know the answers to any of these questions. All I can tell you is that the butterfly was beautiful. And that it seemed happy. And that for those few minutes, I felt supremely blessed and special, a feeling that accompanied me through my day. It was like having touched an angel, or maybe having been touched by one. So light and feathery. So gentle. The weight of nothingness on my finger, just air and wings.

I imagined its heart beating quietly beneath its butterfly skin. If I were very, very quiet, could I hear it? Could I feel it? And could it feel my heart beating in my finger where it touched me? All of these mysteries . . . But for me, most of all, just . . . plain . . . joy.

Signed,
The Butterfly Girl

The soundtrack: Queen, Spread Your Wings.