Butterfly season

The past few weeks have seen untold numbers of butterflies in our local environ. Butterflies clinging precariously to garden phlox and lavender blossoms. Butterflies swooping down the hillside and up into the trees. Butterflies beating against the garage window from the inside, though the gaping, open garage door lies mere inches from their backs.

Why was something created with such beauty? For one, their enchanting markings can offer protection from predators. But those wings. They are so lovely and fragile. They allow the insects to be ensnared by cobwebs around my house. To tear them - an easy feat - is to spell guaranteed demise for their owner.

On a recent trip to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, J and I visited the butterfly exhibit. We listened patiently to instructions before entering - do not touch the butterflies, and if they land on you, let one of the museum staff remove them for you. Before we exited, we were encouraged to gently check our persons to ensure we were leaving without hangers-on, for surely they would perish outside the protection of the exhibit.

Butterflies, to me, are delicate tragedies waiting to happen.

When I was young, my mother told me that her sister had a special affinity for these graceful creatures. This seemed appropriate, for my aunt was at once ephemeral and lovely herself. After enduring the violent and sad childhood she shared with my mother, she struggled with alcoholism before succumbing to a strange early-onset permutation of Alzheimer's.

My memories of her, though, are still vivid. Everyone adored her and the happy aura that seemed to surround her. I can clearly picture the home movies of my mother and aunt swinging my brother - still in a swim diaper - up and over wavelets coming ashore at Ocean City. I can remember being K's age, watching with fascination the way my aunt would apply her lip gloss. She was the one who introduced the concept of the back-rub-train to our home: we'd all sit in a row on the living room floor, one behind the other, each giving the person in front of them a back rub. After a time, the person at the front of the line would switch to the back so everyone got a turn getting a massage for 'free'. Laughter, of course, surrounded her. I can recall her scent to this day.

When I look up and see the imprecise movements of a beautiful butterfly against a blue summer sky, I think of my aunt. Is she here with me? What does her heaven look like? I try not to think about my last visit with her, alone when I was 17, when I could clearly recognize her dementia symptoms. I try not to think about how by 19 I was begging my mother to let me attend her funeral (none of us were allowed to go). I think instead about something that would have made her smile. Yes, I think about the party.

When I was four, my aunt turned 40. My mother and father planned a big party for her, in part to celebrate (my mother always made a big deal of birthdays), and in part to poke fun at the ripe old age. We made posters to line my aunt's route to our house - posters that read, 'Oh no!' and 'How Old is Dee?' My father made an enormous 40 out of 1 x 2's, lined it with Christmas lights, and stood it in the front yard. When my aunt arrived on that lush August afternoon, she howled with laughter and hugged us all effusively. She was vivacious and beautiful, and not at all delicate. Isn't this how all butterflies should be remembered?