Butterflies

Recalling an only regret

Regret is for fools. Not sure who said that. Maybe it was me. The point is this: Regret is worthless. It’s debilitating. Disastrous. We all know it. We hope instead that we find our mistakes to be stepping stones to a better place. The truth is, however, we are human and humans fall into bouts of remorse and guilt. No one wants to be a prisoner of the past. Regret does that. Jose Saramago, the great Portuguese author wrote in his book Blindness: “If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?” That’s a statement I could live by, if it weren’t for the memories of the butterflies.

On a recent morning walk along the main street in my small town, I came upon a sign I had not noticed before. It sits in the center of a tiny village garden. Monarch Waystation. I had read somewhere about these signs and the mission they encourage, to give the migratory monarch butterfly a place to rest and feed as it makes the incredible journey from Canada and America to Mexico for the winter. Without nectar from flowers like milkweed, the butterflies would be unable to make that pilgrimage and may not survive. I read the sign and studied the flowers, and it was then that a rush of remorse came over me, regret for what I had done as a boy.

I was 8 years old that summer. My neighbor, a boy three years older had begun the hobby of capturing, killing, and mounting butterflies. He would snatch them in a tight net, hold them by their wings, drop lighter fluid on their bodies, and as they quickly died, he’d watch their wings slowly open in a final natural reflex, offering their beauty one last time. Gently, using small pins, he would pierce the ends of the wings, attaching them to heavy white cardboard to display their glorious colors.

I wanted to be like him. I wanted to be like my neighbor. I wanted to capture butterflies.

My mother agreed to buy a small net, and I borrowed my father’s can of lighter fluid from his workshop in the basement, gathered a handful of pins from my mother’s sewing box, found an old cardboard box and tore away a part of it to use for mounting, and headed out to find butterflies. Over the summer, I captured white ones, yellow ones, light blue ones, and, at least once, I snatched a monarch. I remember most vividly how it had fluttered around the flowers in my mother’s backyard garden. Moving slowly through the marigolds with my net held high, I closed in on the monarch. In a fast and furious swoosh, I leapt at the butterfly, missing it once, twice, then with a quick backhand, caught it in the net and pressed the net to the ground, locking the monarch inside. Through the netting, I held the wings together with one hand, and with the other dropped lighter fluid on its tiny head. The wings—the stripes and color of a jungle tiger—relaxed and opened to the world.

Above the bed of artist Frida Kahlo at her home, La Casa Azul in Mexico City, is a magnificent glass-enclosed collection of butterflies, a gift from her friend artist Isamu Noguchi. He screwed the display to the ceiling so that Frida, while in bed after losing her leg in what some say was a botched surgery could view something beautiful. The home is now a museum, and the butterfly collection remains, a symbol of friendship and natural splendor. I’ve never been to La Casa Azul, but I have seen the photos of the butterfly collection. Although I understand Noguchi’s gesture, I am made limp thinking of those insects, dead and preserved, and made heartbreakingly uneasy remembering my summer of butterflies, my own collection of death never offered as a gift or as a symbol of nature’s wonders, but only the exercise of a little boy’s desire to be recognized. Was it a sincere act, one with a good purpose, as Saramago might wonder? No. It was not. There was nothing sincere about it. Nothing justified.

The next summer I forgot all about butterflies and about the older boy next store. I found baseball and swimming, and, more importantly, friends who wanted to be with me and I with them. I’m unsure what happened to the crude cardboard display of the pinned butterflies, but I have recalled it nearly every time I see a butterfly floating in the breeze, the flash of a fifty-year old memory.

The monarch I captured as a boy never had the chance to make the long, magnificent journey to Mexico. The deaths of that butterfly and all the others have remained a regret. But if that’s my only one, then I’m a pretty lucky man. It is good to believe that just blocks from my current home, other monarchs are gathering in a garden, finding new strength to carry on and fulfill the epic adventure. An old regret lingers. But yet, maybe discovering the waystation of milkweed and nourishing flowers is comfort and redemption enough to help a little boy forgive himself for what he did all those years ago.