The Life of a Butterfly

Maybe it's the weather. Or maybe the known structure of life on the weekend. Probably it is the disruption of a week that felt long, as a large percentage of the work I've been doing the past fifteen months melted away into ambiguity and silence. I don't deal well with silence. Ambiguity is fine; silence is not. But by mid-afternoon, all anxieties and fears had melted before the glorious heat. It was 80 degrees in the Mission and girls were wearing sundresses or shorts. Everyone was out for a walk. As my son, the coach, prepared his team for their upcoming game less than ten hours from now against a perennial power, Jamestown, and I watched, everything ailing me mentally and physically seemed to drift away like of of those wispy clouds my Grandson finds so mysterious. In this new mood, all seemed possible, once again. I'll start a company or write a book. Seeing the world through the fresh eyes of my children and grandchildren, I'll rediscover magic and find a way to spread magic. Life brings you a lot of magic but also a lot of poison. You learn how to deal with both. The extremes, in the end, turn out to not be the problem. They are the easiest things to handle. For a person like me, at least, it is the hum-drum, ordinary, daily events that prove most challenging, and I often wonder why? I repeat like mantras the lessons I've learned from others -- "all we have is now," or "live in the moment." But this can prove hard to do in the reality I face. Some very ordinary moments prove to be truly terrifying. My only advice to myself is to hold on and wait for the next moment, and if that one is no good, the next. This can be, on occasion, quite a struggle, but I've discovered coping mechanisms, some of which I'd be glad to share if anyone reading these words ever encounters a similar abyss. Today, the sun came out, the sky turned crystal, the winds fell, the flowers bloomed. I watched a Monarch butterfly circle under my back stairs, at a low moment when I couldn't locate any meaning for why I was standing there, in my slippers, seemingly with nothing to do. Of course, I had many things to do. We all always do. But life gets busy and then it gets quiet. A butterfly's life is brief. In the period she exists, she brings beauty to our common world. I witnessed the beauty of this one butterfly today when I stood helplessly confused. Maybe that was the turning point. Or maybe it was reconnecting with the bustling world my children give to me. Outside my daughter's school, searching for her face, seeing her smile. Or, maybe a bit later on, when she and her brother, the coach, were talking about what it is like for kids playing sports when their parents don't show up for games. This part of their conversation hit me in the heart, knowing how many kids never see their parent on the sideline. They both brought me into the conversation very consciously. "I hardly ever remember a game when you were not there, Dad," said my son. "Me neither," said my daughter. -30-