Raising Butterflies

Astrid Frances was getting impatient poking along and peering at the country roadsides as she drove to Manhattan from a friend’s Connecticut house.
Until just around the next bend she saw it—milkweed, for raising butterflies.
Soon she was crawling around in a patch of milkweed plants beside the country road, looking up at the undersides of the leaves.  Spotting a leaf with a batch of eggs on it, Astrid cut it off the plant, leaving just a little stalk attached, then laid it carefully in her paper grocery bag.  Paper bags really were the best for butterflies, or rather their eggs, but they’d become hard to find.  First paper bags were in; now they were out.  She didn’t like these changes. 
         She found a few more leaves with tightly attached eggs, then exhausting that spot, scrambled along the edges of the field looking for another milkweed patch.  A tree branch knocked off her straw hat—she didn’t want any more freckles; she was covered with them. But the hat kept falling off, and the ditches along the field had water in them, making her slip and slide.
The expedition wasn’t as much fun as usual. 
         Finally, discovering some milkweed plants, she squatted down, again inspecting the undersides of the leaves for eggs.  They were not so plentiful this year.  This started her worrying about the butterfly population. 
         A state patrol car cruised by on the country road alongside the field, and Astrid crouched down even more, suddenly finding herself on her bottom.  She didn’t think the guy had seen her.  Removing plant life from the roadside was illegal, but then who cared about ordinary old milkweed.  She continued staring endlessly at the white-green fuzzy undersides of the leaves with sunshine from above illuminating thin milky veins sprawling through the leaves carrying caterpillar food.  Beautiful.  But to most people milkweed was just a stalky light green roadside weed with big leaves.  There were so many important things folks didn’t know...like the fact that milkweed was the lifeblood of Monarch butterflies.
         Astrid continued picking until she had two grocery bags full of stalks.  Enough for now, she thought, and, standing up, noticed that there were Monarch butterflies lighting on some of the weeds, and then flying quickly away.  Odd.  Out of season.  How could that be?  She stood a moment in wonderment; how those golden and black lacy wings filled her heart!
         Musing about the off-schedule butterflies, she struggled out of the ditch, lurched up to the road, teetering with the two full bags held flat in front of her on the palms of her hands, and thought how weird she must look.  She was in the country, so it maybe it looked like she was carrying fresh-baked pies. Well, there weren’t any people around anyway. But here came the patrol car again.  Didn’t he have anything else to do?  He pulled alongside.  “What have you got there, lady?” the patrolman asked.
No point in lying.  “Milkweed,” she said in the most casual way.
“What do want with that, mam?”
“Oh, to grow butterflies.”          
He got out of the car to look inside her bags, nodded as if they were perfectly normal, went back toward his car, “Butterflies, huh?  From those weeds?  Well, you’re not supposed to be gathering wild plants.  You could get a ticket, you know.”
”A ticket!” she tried to sound astounded, but knew she was safe!
“Just don’t do it again,” he said and pulled away.
The perils of weed-gathering amused her until she got to her car and carefully, very gently, placed the open bags on the back seat of her vintage Jaguar.  Starting her drive back to the city, Astrid thought about her artwork and worried about how stuck she was.  She’d had plenty of success, but her painting was transitioning into something different, and now she couldn’t seem to paint herself out of—well, a paper bag she chuckled inwardly.  So discouraging…oh, now what was going on?
         She heard paper rustling around in the back and looked quickly over her shoulder to see full grown Monarchs rushing out of the open tops of the bags.  It wasn’t possible.  Butterflies took weeks to develop!  But the beautiful things were flitting and flying all over the car.  One sat on the steering wheel.  They went around in circles, hitting against the windows.  Were they trying to escape?  The car was nearly full of butterflies: wing tips were brushing each other; confused, the butterflies became frenetic; then in a sudden surge they all rushed back into the bags.  There was no more movement.  Just two silent paper bags as before.
         Jolted, Astrid pulled off the road and sat with her hands on the steering wheel, blinking, wondering.  For a few moments she gave herself to the strange golden vision of whirling butterflies, large and splendid, gilded orange wings with thin black stripes and black edges, gold-dotted, circling fast from a small inner vortex and spiraling out and out until they brushed the car windows.  She had heard their wings rushing.  Then the astounding vision gradually, quietly receded.
         She slowly got out of the car, opened the back door gingerly, peeped in at the bags, and touched one.  Nothing. Finally she looked into the bags; all the milkweed was in place with the eggs still attached.  What had happened?  How wonderful!  She reminded herself that the eggs had to become caterpillars which required to eat and eat, then form a chrysalis in which the butterfly grows and finally breaks out, weak, wet and limp. 
         She shook her head back and forth hard to shake away the vision.  Perhaps her mind had been playing tricks.  Who knew?  She headed back to the city again finally pulling up to the canopy of her Riverside Drive apartment building.  Nervously, she took the two bags to the doorman.  He didn’t blink, took the bags carefully as she cautioned him, “Now hold them flat.  Put them in the mailroom—flat, please, Homer.”
         “I know, Mrs. Frances.”
         And she knew he did know.  She’d been training the building employees to deal with her hobby for years.  But this time...what if...well, she wouldn’t think about that.
         After parking, she returned to her apartment.  It faced the wide-open Hudson River, but with its silk upholstered walls, heavy silk draperies and a wall of rare books surrounding the marble fireplace, the ambience was deep comfort.  All the furniture was soft and velvety, everything a rich contrast for airy, fluttering butterflies.  She called it her cocoon, and it was a cocoon for her, a shelter in her life where her art could flower quietly inside her, while she went about  the peaceful, careful task of watching the eggs, tending the caterpillars, then the cocoons, and finally the splendid emerging Monarchs.
         Shedding her rough dirty clothes, Astrid showered and slipped into a floaty white batiste nightgown, then started the dreamy, pains-taking process of drawing the milkweed stalks out of the bags, slowly and carefully, one by one, slowly, and gently. One, then another, careful not to let them hit against each other, careful not to jar the eggs.  She fastened each one delicately in place along the trunks of the large houseplants all around the living room and thought about her last painting—so wrong!  There was no point in even finishing it. 
Sighing softly, she sank back on a rounded down sofa to admire her handiwork.  You could hardly tell the milkweed stalks were there they were so cleverly attached.  No grade school butterfly project for her.  She made her apartment their garden, gradually freeing them, until at the end, in her white nightgown, at night—God forbid any of her snoopy neighbors should see--she would creep out the back window onto the fire escape that ran down the back of the building.  Leaning over the railing, holding the last Monarch on her palm, inches in front of her face, Astrid would gently blow on it until it fluttered away into the canyon between the tall buildings.  In her white nightgown, she would watch its orange wings dipping and gliding until they were lost in the dark.
         The day’s pleasures were over and Sunday evening intruded, depressing because she dreaded trying to paint, was frightened to death she couldn’t paint anymore.  Every day she went to her studio and came away frustrated.  So frustrated!  Her art was her being.  She couldn’t stand the emptiness; the hole inside her ached. What about quitting for a while?  Taking a break?  A trip?  No!  Her mind was jumping back and forth with white noise, confusion.
         Anxiety drove her to her feet; she stood, drifting around the apartment, picking up a magazine, putting it down, musing about her obsession with beauty which had begun when she was a little child on Long Island, in the most mundane of suburbs.  She remembered when her mother had given her the first butterfly net, her beautiful mother, who hadn’t shared her beauty with her daughter. 
         She found herself at the hall mirror, staring at the head-full of springy reddish-brown curls standing out around her face, her small straight nose.  Heart-shaped.  That was it!  Her face was heart-shaped with big, surprised brown eyes and, of course, all the freckles, little ones.  But she accepted herself now—as not beautiful, but unique.  She wore flowing, dramatic clothes, tied her fuzz of curls back with ribbons to make her little face stand forth,  and looked like what she was, a woman consumed with the passion to create what she could only adore, but couldn’t possess—beauty.  Beauty in all its glory. 
         As she went to turn off the lights in the living room, she approached the wide arched doorway—it was not just any doorway, but had graceful plasterwork all around the top—and it framed a sight that took her breath away.  The monarchs were out again, not whirling frantically in a golden frenzy this time, but fluttering, swooping and darting gracefully from leaf to leaf in the plants.  Forgetting they weren’t supposed to be there, she breathed, “Oh, you wonderful things!
         Astrid slowly went forward and quietly put forth her hand palm down.  One fluttered onto the top of her knuckles, seeming to say, in a tiny piping whisper, “Hi there!”
         Another, on a nearby leaf, whispered, “Look at me!”
         And Astrid couldn’t breathe.  “Oh, you’re so beautiful,” she whispered back, instinctively playing to their egos.  Butterflies needed compliments?
           Then she stood there afraid to take a breath, as gracefully, each butterfly winged toward what seemed an appointed leaf.  They were gone.  Astrid inspected the leaves; the eggs were dark; they’d be hatching soon.
         Butterflies too early.  Talking.  Astrid was a little shaken, but she went to clean up the remaining milkweed mess in the kitchen and then climbed into her white pillow-filled bed to read before sleep.  As she was drifting off, thinking about the premature butterflies, butterflies unleashed, unfettered by nature’s schedule, a glorious painting came into her sub-conscious.
         The next morning she made a mad dash to get to her studio.  The painting was still in her head, but what if it got away?  “Good-by, my beauties,” Astrid called softly to the butterflies.
         She appreciated the perfect light in her studio.  It was the only beauty there; the rest was purposely plain, nothing to distract her.  Quickly, she got out the tubes, brushes, spatulas, putty knives, all her tools, then leaned a big five by seven foot canvas against the wall.   
         She started joyously with broad flying curves of yellow, gold and orange, then smaller ones.  The beauty of it!  The beauty. Happy, she fluttered the putty knife over it all, mixed some dark black-brown, then hesitated, lost.  It could become too heavy.  She stepped back from the work.  Maybe nature’s green in the background?  She had lost the image.  She thought there had been more colors.  But Monarchs were gold and black, just gold and black. Putting down the palette, she sat on her high paint-splotched stool, emptying her mind, hoping the picture would return.  It didn’t.  And the light was going. 
         She grabbed some watercolors and watercolor paper hoping to dash off an impression of the whole painting in her mind.  But, no, she couldn’t capture the whole perfect thing.  It would come back, the beauty of it, she told herself with scarce hope, maybe...slowly. Besides, this piece was going to be such a departure from her recent work; it was bound to be a struggle.  She prayed the inspiration was still there in her.  Somewhere.
          Maybe the painting itself would tell her.  Sometimes that happened.  She stared at it.  Nothing.
         She went home.  Maybe the butterflies would come out again.  Nothing. 
         It was intolerable. 
         Angry and aching Astrid wandered toward the milkweed to find that almost all the eggs had already developed into long thin bright red and yellow-striped caterpillars, all precociously gobbling up their leaves.  This was going very fast! 
         She was still wondering about the caterpillars when at last the full-grown butterflies began to appear again.  This time they filled the whole room, flew into the folds of the draperies, made a huge tight cluster, wing next to wing next to wing on the arm of her sofa, landed on her shoulders, in her hair.  One was on the tip of her nose, but when she blinked, it flew away with a tiny chattering sound.  What was that high, clipped little sound?  From all over the room.  Too soft to hear any words, but like some kind of chitchat. It made her laugh.  Were they talking about her?  Butterflies would gossip!
         A small one boldly perched on her knee.  No dot on its back wing, a female.  She seemed to raise up her little body, fluttering up courage.  Then, sweetly, she piped, “What’s wrong, Astrid?”
         A big male dove onto her other knee, with a drop of huskiness in his tiny voice, he said, “She doesn’t know, silly.”
         In a nervous flutter the female came to hover, treading air right in front of the male.  “She can’t paint.  She’s scared!” she said sweetly, protectively.
         “She should be!”
          Having had the last word, he soared away proudly, leaving the other hanging in the air helplessly for a moment before she shook her wings and followed, shout-whispering, “She needs help.”
         Suddenly, the male wheeled around to face the female, “Aren’t we doing enough?”
         “What does that mean?” Astrid wondered and her thoughts drifted, as entranced, she watched the butterflies’ airy meanderings with delight, giggled as one especially regal butterfly flew-hopped along the mantle piece. Was it that opinionated one?  His golden wings would flap just once, and he’d hop forward, time and time again. Yes, it was a male with the black spot on his end wings.  Showing off?  A bid for attention from the females, some particular one?
         A lovelorn Monarch!  Oh, how delicious.  She laughed at him, and he gave two disdainful flaps of his wings, sending himself rocketing over to the deepest, darkest corner of the plants.  She gave herself over to watching their antics as a group of them formed a ragged circle, flying up and down together from floor to ceiling, like a bouncing ball. Comical, still chattering.  All the time.  She was mesmerized, delighted, blissful.  But soon they began to disappear, and as the airy light creatures left, the picture came back to her.  It bloomed in her head.  She grabbed her pastels and started filling the page quickly:  butterflies amidst flowers, one perched on a hot pink zinnia, their flight, the migration, over-wintering in the flamboyance of central Mexico.  In abstraction.  Everything would be there, representing the light beautiful essence of butterflies.
         The next day, Astrid worked with growing excitement and hope in her breast all day, believing it was happening.  Flowing out of her hands.  Lightness.  Beauty.  She could hardly bear to stop, but knowing better than to keep pushing as it grew dark, she stood back from the painting, looking at the whole of it for the first time in hours.  She threw herself into an old armchair in a corner, groaning aloud.
         “It’s nothing like what I imagined!  It’s nothing!”
         She leapt up and flung a cloth over the painting.                    
         Scooping up a handful of Kleenex from the table beside her chair, she buried her face in it.  What’s the matter with me?  Why can’t I capture them...the soul of them.  They’re so alive inside of me.  The butterflies in her living room floated through her imagination: she tried to concentrate on the images, but they flitted apart, broke up and flickered away, until there was empty blackness behind her closed eyes.
         Lifting her face from the wad of Kleenex, she threw it violently across the room, then sat exhausted, looking around, dazed, at the studio which consisted of walls stacked with leaning paintings, a table full of paints and tools, rags, palettes, turpentine and some shelves filled with art books.
         “You can’t finish a painting in one day.  Give yourself time.” she comforted herself, nursing her disappointment with unfocussed thoughts of all the creations which had been born here.  The shows.  Her name in the papers.  And, yes, the money.  But it wasn’t enough.
         She had not reached the pinnacle, never attained the perfect, exquisite beauty that she grasped for, that she must create.  Mournfully, she imagined a huge dark wall, a Berlin wall, forbidding, unapproachable, a blockade.
         Heavily, she went on home.          
         When Astrid opened the door to her apartment, the rooms were bursting with butterflies, the whole place aglow in orange and gold.  She quickly shut the door, afraid they’d escape...and a few had gotten out.  What would the elevator man think?
         She walked right through their swirling bodies, became part of their overpowering presence, turned and turned herself, swooped herself into the living room, waved her arms gently, flapped them quickly, knocking butterflies every which way. They were all over her.  She felt light, free, transformed, beautiful like one of them. 
         Butterfly essence.  Could you paint it?  Yes, yes, the feeling—but how to hold onto it?  Even in the midst of them, the concept was fading.  She plopped herself on the sofa, all buoyancy draining away.  Abstractedly, she continued watching, but barely saw them...just a haze with a chittering worried sound that hardly fazed her.  She was a void--until they forced her attention, a dozen or more soft creatures alighting up and down her arms.          
         Suddenly the bold male zoomed around the room a few times before alighting again with his wings held high.
         “You’ll never catch us!”
         It sounded like a mean dare!  Nasty thing!  Astrid watched him angrily as he soared back into the plants and at the same time, thrusting out of nowhere, another image was emerging, different, powerful. 
Again she scurried for her pastels and began filling a corner of the page with bright squiggles of brilliant yellow and reds, the colors of the caterpillars.  And she streaked in pale milk weedy greens from top to bottom, over the reds and yellows.  That was the beginning.  But then she went blank.
         The butterflies all started tittering. Their wings whipped up and down.  More tittering. They all whooshed away from her to join the others, but as they went she thought she could hear them telling each other, “She’s getting it.  She's getting closer.”
         They were such chatterboxes.  Who would have thought?  When she went to bed the butterflies were in her bedroom, scattered all over her white duvet, still chattering in their tiny little voices, then whirring softly.  Comforting her.  Soothing her. 
         When Astrid awoke they were at rest, but when she moved, they fluttered up above the duvet, creating a natural airy, live covering.  She was surprised they were still there, worried about it. They were supposed to be caterpillars now. Very confusing.  She went to brush her teeth, and when she came out of her bathroom, they were gone.  She looked at the plants in the living room, saw normal caterpillars which had nearly eaten up all their milkweed.  No problem.  She could get more.  They were continuing nature’s cycle despite some magical early appearances.
         In her studio, she put last night’s sketch next to her canvas, readied her paints, uncovered her work, stared out the large windows and, taking deep breaths to calm herself, adjusted the white bandana she wore to hold back her curls, picked at the dried paint on the immense white shirt she put on over leggings in her studio.
         She felt dreamy and as if something had come unknotted in her chest.  Then a butterfly winged across the room, touching down on top of her painting; she smiled at it tentatively, recognizing the big bossy male.  “Last chance!” he piped.
         Not what I need, she grumbled to herself.
         As if by a signal, other butterflies appeared.  In her studio?  Really displaced.  Wafting around listlessly at first, they soon became frenetic, as if they’d hit turbulence. They zoomed, looped, nosedived, ran into each other.  One fell to the floor. Astrid felt frightened for them, but eventually they came back to themselves. The room was alight with fluttering golden wings, butterflies cruising about gaily. They were more scattered, not massed like at home, but enough for her joy to surge. 
         Her imagination was leaping ahead of her now, as she impatiently set up a step ladder and climbed up to the corner of her work.  At first, hands shaking with fear, she started with squiggles, the reds and yellows of the night before; shaky was OK.  Then settling down, she worked the greens in, made clumps of ragged dark greens, light yellow greens, then streaks of greens down the length of the canvas, growing lighter, lighter and lighter.  Her small body had been up and down the ladder many times.  Stumbling now, she felt depleted and looked around the room.  The butterflies were gone.  Of course they were.  That was all she had left in herself today.
         This time she didn’t try to look at the whole painting.  It was too soon for it all to come together.  She pulled the cloth over it, cleaned up and went home thinking about the business with the butterflies.  Raising them to begin with was a quirky obsession. That was nothing new!  They simply delighted her. But now they seemed to be almost part of her. Muses?
         At home Astrid found a chrysalis, then another and another.  Now real butterflies were developing inside each urn-shaped greenish cocoon hanging in the plants.  They were almost translucent, beautiful in their own right.  Her affinity with them was nearly palpable.  She felt calmer than she had in months—in place of clenched determination, a sense of freedom was taking hold.  Like the freedom of the butterflies.  After all, the courageous Monarch, first wet, weak and limp, pumped blood into itself, then lifted its wings and flew.  Alone.  An icon of beauty.
Now for the next few days she painted as if driven.  She whooshed in large areas of varying greens with her putty knife, then speckled in drops of flower colors here and there; freeform flowers of every color, hot pink, yellow, blue, red, orange, all popped bold against the soft undulating greens.  She swiped a brush lightly across the background, creating a feeling of flight and movement, streaming to a top corner, off into the beyond.  With turpentine on a sponge, she dabbed at the middle ground, gently, painstakingly creating softness, calm at the center.
         The canvas, covered with pulsing color popping forth from the softer greens, streaked diagonally and softened where she had sponged, was the background for the final bold gesture.  She made a huge, flying loop cover the entire space, but slightly off-center; it was in the shape of a loose script letter “e”,  with strong golds and blacks, sometimes tight and bold, other places spaced out and streaked, then changing to open, lacy abstract wing shapes.  She brushed in details, used thick paint and putty knife, then laid the canvas on the floor and carefully spattered orange and black paint right into the loop.
         She felt as if the butterflies, her butterflies, had winged through her soul onto her canvas.

         In the art gallery, Astrid stood between two friends, each of them with an arm around her waist as they talked.
“It nearly flies off the wall!”
‘Amazing, the motion, that riot of colors, how did you do it?”                    
Rushing in late, an art critic came up to them breathlessly, kissed Astrid swiftly on the cheek, then stopped.  Stared.  Stepped back.  Looked from different angles.
You have outdone yourself,” he said.  “Astounding!”
The critic from the New York Times arrived, serious, thoughtful.
“Uh, oh,” Astrid thought.
He cleared his throat.  “Hm, it’s a new genre, Astrid.  Your own.  He looked at the other critic,  “Maybe it’s ‘Representative Expressionism’—what do you think?”

“Butterflies #1” was the first in the acclaimed series, “Raising Butterflies” by Astrid Frances.