Settling

Walking up the path in the park I saw a little girl standing by herself, on a patch of grass under several large fir trees. She was maybe 9 or 10, and she was pointing earnestly across the path. She seemed to be communicating something as part of a game with another girl, “I found you” or “you go that way” but when I looked at where she was pointing I saw a large yellow butterfly with black spots, floating in the air about three feet from the ground.

I stopped and watched as it sailed across the path, losing altitude alarming quickly, like those paper airplanes I used to make that sank gracefully, rather than flew. When it neared the ground, it began flapping again, and, in a chaotic, almost Brownian-motion series of jerks, it was quickly higher than our heads.

I watched the butterfly circle and loop up above, and I watched the girl circle and loop beneath it. She reached out her hands towards it, willing it to come to her, but when it neared her she pulled in her arms and jolted away, as if it might sting her.

When it came near me, I also put out my arm. I remembered the time I'd been in a butterfly sanctuary. I had stood very still and held out my arm, and one of the butterflies landed on the back of my wrist, sitting there long enough for my arm to feel heavy and weighed down by it.

The fact that the butterfly had landed on me had amazed me. Because I'd tried it many times before, out in the world. Holding out my hand to a wild butterfly, willing it to grace me with its choice. To trust me. To let me know that it deemed me worthy. Worthy for it to get close to me. To allow me to see it clearly, without all that flapping and avoiding, and changing of direction.

The butterfly flew towards the girl again, and she held out her hands. But not open and still. She reached for it graspingly, with hands almost clawed. Her hands were up, trying to snatch it out of the air. Or maybe trying to ward it off. It came near her again, and she spun away from it.

“I like it, but it scares me,” she said. Not really to me. More just to identify to herself what was going on inside. But I was there. We were a little group of three. Me, her, and the connecting thread of the butterfly, keeping us together. So I said, “yeah.”

The butterfly came my way, and I held my arm out again, fighting against the self-consciousness of it. The clear gesture of wanting, of hope in something that I eagerly desired but didn't believe would actually happen. As I raised my arm when it came near, I realized that I was making a similar mistake as the girl. In raising my arm only when it came near, however gently, was that really so different from shooing it away?

A call came from behind the girl, and she turned and said “just one more minute.” I looked past her and saw her mother, sitting on a bench, swallowed in shadow. Another call, and the girl broke our little ring, and ran to the bench. The butterfly circled up higher and I stood there watching it, my head craning back. It found a branch in the fir tree, maybe twenty feet up, and finally alit.

I stayed there a little longer, feeling some relief in the final stillness. In the cessation of all that frantic effort. And appreciating the image of the bright yellow wings against the deep green of the needles.

Then I too turned away. I chose the path out of the park and headed for home.

Andrea Blumberg