Monarch Butterflies

So you know about the Fish Tacos.

Here is where the Monarch Butterflies in my blog title come from....

For as long as I can remember, I have always stopped in my tracks at the sight of one particular butterfly: The Monarch. The stark contrast between the crisp white, searing orange and inky black of the wings have always held my attention. I used to draw them in school, coloring my orange and black crayons down to nubs, long before the other colours ran out.

I also used to only be able to draw with my tongue sticking out of my mouth. Don’t ask.

Spring and summers with my Mom always involved walks in our neighbourhood, eating banana popsicles, stealing lilacs and looking for Monarch butterflies. I still do all of those things, in case you were wondering. Right down to the lilac theft. If I could keep every tradition my mother and I shared alive, I would. Instead, I pick the ones that remind me most of her free-spiritedness, her sense of play...

Before she died, there was a moment shared between my mother and father, where she promised that she would come back to him as a Monarch butterfly. This was before I believed in signs. I didn’t think people could come back as anything. I was angry that I was losing her. All I wanted to hear from anyone was “we found a cure.”

After sitting Shiva and the mourning period was complete, my father was coaxed by close friends to play a round of golf. Most of his golf games had been with my mother at his side, cracking jokes and having a good time. I think she once injured a squirrel with one of her shots. This would be his first game without her. I clutched my cell phone the entire day, waiting to hear how his day had been, worried that it may have been too soon, and too difficult. This was our conversation when he called, late in the evening:

Me: “Hi Dad! How was your golf game? Were you okay to play alone?” (Yeah, I could have opened with something less blunt, I know.)

Dad: “I didn’t play alone. I played golf with my wife today.”

Me: “Um, what do you mean?”

Dad: “A Monarch butterfly sat on my golf bag for 18 holes.”

18 holes.

That’s an entire day.

That’s taking clubs out of your golf bag, and then putting them back in. That’s dragging your golf bag across a golf course for hours on end. That’s INSANE.

My mother had always been a woman of her word, but come on: 18 holes??

Following my father’s experience, I have been a more astute observer of when the Monarchs show up in my life. Once when I lost my job, one landed on my arm the moment I left the office, in the middle of the downtown core. When I visited the cemetery one summer, one flew right by my nose as I knelt to put some roses on her grave.

In the summer of 2010, my cousin lost her beautiful baby boy just 4 hours after he was born. There was no rhyme or reason to the loss. Her pregnancy had been healthy and perfect. Our family was devastated, trying to make sense of how such a tragedy could occur. When I visited the hospital, I learned that in the maternity ward, small notices are put on the doors to the rooms where a woman has experienced babyloss. Mostly so that nurses and visitors know to enter the room with increased compassion and sensitivity for the mother and father.

I walked down the corridor to my cousin’s room, noticing pictures of kittens or a rainbow on the doors. As I reached her door, I literally stopped in my tracks: On her door was a picture of a Monarch butterfly. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I told her and her husband a few days later, a moment I am so blessed to have been able to share with two people I love very much.

There is no doubt in my mind that my Mom is ever present in the free and fluttering body of a butterfly. It is a constant reminder of how unique, special, and colourful she was.  And every spring and summer, I look forward to the return of the Monarch butterflies, wondering just where and when they will turn up.