Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away….. Oh…no. Wait. That was a Different story! Forgive me. My mind wanders these days. 🙂
But, it actually Was “once upon a time”; perhaps 15 or so years ago, when all my little ducklings were still quite young.
A dear friend of mine and I used to go through curriculum magazines together, bending back the pages and marking all the nifty items we longed to add to our homeschooling library. There were so many neat options; we always felt like kids in a candy store. She was always blessing us with educational gifts from these types of places. (I’m guessing all those hours we spent making our wish lists together helped her know exactly what to pick!) Well, this particular time, her eyes landed upon a “butterfly garden” kit where we could send off a coupon for five live caterpillars (one for each child!), and she just knew that was the kit for my kiddos! We could raise them ourselves in a nifty little pop-up cage. When the coupon for the caterpillars came, I filled it out and we all waited with child like excitement for our package to arrive.
The day finally came. It had everything we would need. The children were thrilled! There was a caterpillar for each of them, and they spent hours gathered around our kitchen table together, naming & claiming them. It was precious.
One of the great things about this little kit was that the entire process— from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly— was to only take about 3 weeks. I figured that was enough time to teach patience with out the lull of tremendous boredom setting in.
We had only had the little buggers a few days when they all got the urge to make themselves a chrysalis. Their process was mind boggling to observe, but it left our nifty little butterfly house void of activity. The children would gather around the table every few hours to see if their babies had turned into butterflies yet. And, every few hours, they would leave the table with their heads hanging down, disappointed that nothing had happened yet. This went on, day after day. The adult in me understood that this stage takes a while. I tried to explain that there was a LOT of activity going on INSIDE that chrysalis, but from the kids’ vantage points, they had traded exciting little caterpillars for “stupid” little tents which did nothing. Boredom set in. Until…..
One morning, my middle child, Collin, who was about 6 at the time, was sitting up on top of the table, intently staring at our butterfly house. He wanted so badly to see them “DO something!” But alas, they were quiet and still. When he went to climb down, he accidentally bumped the cage and when he did, each of the little chrysalis kind of wiggled on the twig it was attached to. He stopped and did a double take. They calmed down. So, he blew on them! And, as his breath hit them, they each Wiggled again! He giggled. It was the giggle of power! (Something only a mother can understand. LOL) And the next thing I knew, he unzipped the cage, and poked one with a pencil. It wasn’t a hard, mean sort of poke. It was simply a gentle prodding, so that it would wiggle. And wiggle it did! Our butterfly garden was no longer boring for him!
From that point on, the first thing he’d do each morning was run to the butterfly house to give his little chrysalis a “good morning poke”! Each morning, it would jerk and wiggle in response to his touch; and each morning the other 4 would just hang there on the little branch, looking as lifeless as could be.
The day finally came. It had only been 3 weeks, but to my impatient brood, it had been an eternity. We awoke that morning to find that all 5 of the little chrysalis were cracked open, and each newly emerged butterfly was clinging to the edge of its own little shriveled up tent, drying its wings with a gentle, steady, flapping motion. Well….. at least 4 of the 5 were. The 5th one, Collin’s little fella, was having a bit of a problem. His little wings were tiny and crinkled. They were spread out to their maximum capacity, but….they weren’t formed properly. Within an hour, all the other little butterflies were gloriously fluttering through our butterfly garden; but Collin’s little guy just sat there on its chrysalis, trying to flap wings that were never going to carry him any where.
I’m not a butterfly specialist. Heck, I’m not even a scientist. But I didn’t need to be either of those things to realize that Collin’s little butterfly was suffering from damage it received while it was hibernating. Even though he never was rough with it, and he was never maliciously trying to hurt it, he DID repeatedly disturb it during a cycle of transformation which was very, very important. And even my young children could see what had happened. He was crushed. He ran to his room, hid his face under a pillow and cried the rest of the afternoon. I was crushed. I had no idea that a tiny little daily poke would create permanent damage. (Why hadn’t I known?? I was the homeschool mom; I’m supposed to know these things! But I didn’t know these things.) 🙁
The other children and I eventually released their healthy butterflies into our vegetable garden behind the house. It was joyous and quite beautiful; for four of them, anyway. But, situations are often different for us mothers. The world around us can taste like cotton candy and some how, we can always detect even a hint of bittersweet.
My heart ached for my little boy. I went back to his room, comforted and hugged him, and suggested ways that we could offer his little friend joyful, pleasant surroundings in spite of the situation. I explained that it would take more work, obviously. He’d need to be willing to continue to make sugar water and change out the flowers in the cage every day, but if he was willing, we could do it! His face brightened and the tears dried up. With renewed hope, he ran out into the yard and gathered a delightful selection of pretty things for his colorful little friend.
And you know what? It worked. We couldn’t change the mistake we had made. We couldn’t offer the butterfly a new, healthy set of wings. But we HAD done what we could; and it DID make a difference. Not just to the butterfly, mind you, but to the BOY as well. My son learned a painful lesson about actions and consequences. But he ALSO learned about mercy and hope. He learned that some times we must MAKE our own joy; we must determine to BUILD what life has not freely given us, for whatever reason. He could have chosen to let that little guy die. After all, it was JUST a butterfly. Or was it??
I believe it was far more than that. I believe it was a “growing opportunity” that was packaged to LOOK like a butterfly….. and it taught us all a little something about life.
