Broken

 

Esme jumped out of the car a few weeks ago with this broken butterfly cupped in her hands.

"Look what I found Mama."

She had just returned from a backyard party with Kent. She found the wounded swallowtail in the grass and wanted to bring it to our butterfly bush to see if it would get better. 

With nearly half its wing missing, I thought "No chance in hell."  What I said out loud, though, was something more like "OK, let's try."

So we put it on the tree and she set up lawn chairs to sit and watch it. It sat too. 

I eventually got around to the obvious. Told her the butterfly's future looked bleak. Thinking back on it now, I envy her reaction. 

"I don't care if it flies away because then I'm happy it's not hurt," she said.

And after a spell.

"If it gets killed, I'm still happy because we have a butterfly bush to get butterflies. I can still keep the dead one because it's so beautiful."

Keep it she did because it did indeed die. 

She and Kent went outside with a headlamp later that night to search for the butterfly and happily reported upon their return that it flew away! 

Sadly, I found it the next morning in the middle of the yard. Still alive actually. I put it in a jam jar and closed it. Tightly. 

Esme has been toting the thing around in her backpack ever since. She's got a little mate she rides to and from school with. He's totally into bugs and rocks and random things. Just like her. 

[Funny, at 5 she's already met her soulmate.]

The two of them take the butterfly out for frequent inspections. 

This morning, before she left for school, her mate shouted out the car window that his fish died. He delivered the news in the same "ho hum, things die, things live, it's all just nature" kind of way that Esme talked about the butterfly.

I've been burdened by heavy thoughts lately about my own broken things but now I think I should take a cue from the two kids:

Approach the impossible with cheery optimism; believe; try; embrace the results and find the beauty in the outcome, whatever it might be.