Between the bookends, there has always been a butterfly balanced.  It’s like me focus on the rigid and unyielding elements of the story;  maybe you think that way, too.  But that hasn’t meant the butterfly wasn’t there, becoming and changing, continually unfolding.  Lately I am taking little peeks into the tender, iridescent wing-like pages.  What do I have to lose?

You can’t make a butterfly story just one way, but you also can’t make everything in one afternoon.  Sometimes an image is just a start, and I always hope they are open-ended.  Now that I have made this image, and decided to share it with you, other ways to tell the tale suggest themselves.  That’s why it takes at least 29 butterflies, maybe even more, to see what I have to say.

See what the wind scattered in?  Maybe you cast this butterfly spinning and dreaming towards me.  What a sweet gesture, I truly appreciate it!  Here we go now, stir the air and wave to the breeze, and the butterfly lifts off again on a whisper of thoughtful thoughts.  Where will it land next?  We can’t tell, but you can always visit it here, when you want to open the window for butterflies…

These are just some of the butterflies I have seen in my house.  Once you get going, they come fast and flurrious!

Please read the story Yvette shared in the comments on yesterday’s emergence.  Her son is a gifted butterfly finder, and I learned alot from reading about him!

See what a treasure your comments can be…leave me a little something!

When you are looking for butterflies, you have to look everywhere.  You have to look all over your untidy house, if you have one.  Maybe you have a tidy house.  If so, good luck.  You probably already know where all the butterflies are.  It’s easier to find them if you have to put on your butterfly viewfinder and look.

This composition is intended to show you how to find butterflies with a viewfinder.  It helps to see what to do.  Tomorrow, maybe, we’ll just take a look at the butterflies, but today, I liked seeing where they came from.  I hope you find some today, too!

If people are saints because we need them to be, what happens when we don’t need a saint anymore?

Marv carried us into  realms of wonder, showing us things he imagined were real, and things he didn’t realize we could see –  the way the world looked as we sat on his shoulder above the crowd, how to draw on a paper placemat, the right amount of peanut butter for a graham cracker.  But it was not always so benign.  If he didn’t like what he was seeing, he knew who to blame.  I guess I learned how to do that from him, too.

It was so hard for Marv to see by the light of his own butterfly.  We had to help him with that, Pammy and me.  But now the butterfly is emerging on our path together, flashing its wings out of the shadows.  Definitely, it is emerging, not disappearing.

In this picture, I’m not sure who is needing who.   And that’s the way it is with us, when presenting our butterflies for each other to see.

Today I had the feeling Mom was with me.  She said, “Let’s go to the antique mall, and find St. Patrick’s butterfly.”  I said, “Ok!”  My friend Maryanna was at the mall when I got there.  When she saw me, she laughed.  “Are you following me?” she joked. But really it was just a wonderful coincidence.  I said, “I’m here looking for St. Patrick’s butterfly for Mom.”  Maryanna’s eyes twinkled.  “You better get going then!” she said.

When an intuition strikes so clearly, you can trust something will turn up.  Mom’s presence stayed with me, shining a light on charming things that tickled her sense of whimsy.  It didn’t take long to find butterfly doilies, just the right shades of green.  Maryanna gave me the leprechauns and shamrock girls.  The Madonna Indulgence  came from Aunt Patty’s house, and I think it was Grandma’s.  Just crochet and paper, but to me, it is wonderful.

We never collaborated when Mom was alive.  Her dominating presence made it too hard to share the spotlight.  Today, though, it seemed Mom wanted us to create St. Patrick’s butterfly together.   For once I felt playful and carefree as I began to work, instead of burdened by my usual anxiety.  I listened inwardly, patiently, keeping an open mind.  Mom’s curious nature guided my hands and camera.   A mandala and a garden evolved from the dialogue between my heart and Mom.  Before I knew it the window where I work was dark.  It was time to come in for supper.

Thank you for the fun time, Mamma!  I hope we can do it again!  Love, your Four Leaf Clover Butterfly

Fortunately, the story of the Unintended Butterfly has a happy ending.  The butterfly and the flower found each other, and together they revealed the gift in the everyday all around us.  Happily ever after, the end.

(But not the end of butterflies – more butterflies on Monday…or even Sunday!)

I’m trying out this idea:  see a picture, take a picture.  Of course, this idea occurred to me at a very inconvenient time, when just any old picture won’t do.  For 29 butterflies, I need butterfly pictures.  And you know how that goes, when you have something specific in mind.  As Old Lodge Skins said, “Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t.”  Eventually, though, there might be a third option – sometimes the magic works, but you don’t know it.

Things often start out where you least intend, and wind up where you didn’t imagine.  No matter how often I have this experience, its funny how I always think I know where events are headed.  You can’t take a picture by filling in the lines.  I mean you can, but its best if you discover the lines while you are taking the picture.  Ok, maybe it isn’t best.  But it is more fun!  Come back tomorrow to see the conclusion of this unintended butterfly…

I have been thinking about Mom while doing 29 Butterflies, 2013, even though the images aren’t explicitly about her.  It is both harder and easier than the first year after she died.  By now, I am accustomed to not hearing her voice anymore, but the longer I live without seeing her, the more I recognize that I am still waiting for her to come back.  Lately, I have been feeling so deeply what her loneliness must have been like – how much I think it surprised her to find herself lacking company.  And of course, it hurts me now to think how what I have learned from dealing with my grief would have balanced and softened our relationship, and thus given her comfort.

So I keep working on these butterflies – hoping, hoping, hoping, that she can still hear me.

Sometimes butterflies from long ago get forgotten between pages of lace and light and notebook paper, and then one day you find them in the window, right where you left them.