THE BUTTERFLY JAR

Emalyn Remington

University of Maine at Farmington

My father was something of an amateur lepidopterist. When I was young, we used to traipse through fields in the late summer, our eyes peeled for milkweed. When we found the yellow and black caterpillars, we collected them inside of a large Mason jar and stuffed the jar with leaves and sugar water. Sometimes when the world overwhelms me, I close my eyes and remember the sounds of the meadow. The rustling of tall grass against bare legs, birds calling to each other from above, and an orchestra of bugs chirping all around. After we captured our caterpillars, my father would spend the next several weeks teaching me about their unique life cycle. Egg, larva, pupa, butterfly. I waited for my friends to emerge out of their chrysalises and metamorphose into gossamer beauties. It was a simple life cycle to understand. Human life seemed more complicated back then. Growing pains, bad haircuts, unrequited crushes, divorce, adjusting to living in a single-parent household. Now that I am older, the life cycle of a human being has also become quite simple. We are born, we age, and then die. Like butterflies, or really any creature that has ever existed on this planet, when we die is never a guarantee. When I was small, I was taught that people die when they are old or sick or both. I wish now that I could go back to the impression that one’s life simply ended when they had fulfilled their purpose here. That was how my father explained it. I was six. It was the middle of August, and my newest butterfly had hatched. I had spent the entirety of the day before whining over the butterfly jar, impatiently waiting for the small creature with the iridescent wings to become acquainted with its new body. Finally, at dusk, we took the jar outside to the stoop in front of my father’s apartment. Before I sat, I carefully placed the jar between my father and me. The glass created a hollow, gritty noise against the cold concrete. Outside smelled like mowed grass and fresh hay from the farm next door mixed with notes of my father’s Old Spice cologne. A breeze lifted my thin, fawn-colored hair off of my shoulders. It felt deliciously cool against my sunburned neck and I looked up into the fading blue. The sky had just given birth to a smattering of small, twinkling stars. My father was drinking something out of a cold, brown bottle. Condensation poured down the sides and left a stain on the pebbly, grey surface. My legs were starting to hurt; the imprint of the rough exterior left an angry red tattoo against my skin, but I didn’t say anything. We let the quiet settle over us in a way that wasn’t uncomfortable. My father was a man who laughed and talked frequently, so when he was silent, otherwise ordinary, still moments were emphasized. When he finally finished, he looked down at me and smiled. “Nora,” he said, “you can let ‘em go now.”

I squealed with excitement. My tiny hands twisted the lid off of the jar and placed it beside me. Something about releasing the butterflies always felt ceremonious to me. It meant both the end and the beginning. Sometimes they just flew away, wasting no time. But for others, it took them a few moments before allowing the air to kiss their wings, sending them skyward. This one was taking his time. I looked back at my father, who didn’t seem the least bit concerned. “He’s just a little scared, Nora. Talk to him, tell him about how beautiful it is out there.” I thought about all the things I loved. Popsicles and summertime. When my dad painted. How my mother’s hugs felt. My bicycle. I thought about how brilliantly colored the world was. How there were so many textures and shapes and sounds. How it moves so fast and never seems to stop. I allowed my eyelids to close, and I listened carefully to the sounds of my world. How gloriously loud the world was, even in the absence of words. Breath exiting the body, leaves rustling in the trees, water slapping against rocks and rushing downstream in the river across the way. I pulled the jar close to me, whispering all of these secrets to my newly metamorphosed friend. I told him about how scary everything was sometimes, like when my dad yelled or when my mom cried. “It’s okay to be scared,” I said quietly. “I’m scared sometimes too. But it’s really great out there too.” When I opened my eyes, the butterfly was gone. I sat back down on the stoop. My father was watching the creature go. His eyes were glassy. I thought of something I never had before. “What happens after we let them go, pops?” I asked quietly. Sweat had soaked through the sides of his Yankees cap. His skin was tan from long hours spent on other people’s roofs, and covered with large tattoos from his teenage years. Dragons, skulls, my zodiac sign. He was a large man, muscular but also somehow soft and round. He was a painting of himself from his twenties but smudged and worn with age despite being younger than most of my friends’ dads. My dad had eyes that were photocopies of my own. Blue with hints of grey that became electric in the sunlight. Stormy when troubled. They were eyes like the Atlantic. He moved the butterfly jar and the bottle from between us and pulled me close to him. His arm was heavy against my small body, but it was a weight that didn’t bother me. “When we release our little guys, they go and find their friends. They lay the eggs that turn into those caterpillars that you love so much. But when they lay the eggs, the butterflies have fulfilled their purpose. They have created the next generation, and it is time for them to rest.” “So they go to sleep?” I asked, confused. He was quiet for a long moment, “No, baby. They...they die. They close their eyes and they go, well, they go where we all go one day.” “Where?” “Well, some people call it heaven. Some people call it a waiting room until they get re-born into something or someone else. For some people, it’s just this peaceful place filled with people you love and—” “And butterflies?” “Yes,” he said smiling, “there are lots of butterflies.”

My father and I had a lot of conversations over the years. Some were good, some were shitty, but after he died I could only remember the one from that August, sitting with him on the stoop with the butterfly jar and the stars smiling down at us. The day we turned off his life support, I sat with him in the hospital room. He was a man bathed in artificial sleep. Tubes and machines keeping him alive. Selfishly, I hoped that he would die in his sleep. That he would just stop fighting the inevitable. That wasn’t him though. He hadn’t fulfilled his purpose. He was forty one. He hadn’t seen me graduate college yet, or walked me down the aisle. He had grandchildren to meet. Adventures still to embark on. But sometimes, unlike butterflies, we don’t go to our other place knowing that we have lived a fulfilled life. Sometimes we die mid-life, organs failing, with student debt, in a bleach-scented hospital room in Florida. I still talked to him about our butterfly summers. About popsicles and my mother’s curls. I talked to him about the boy that I loved, about writing, about music. I talked to him about my fears about the future. I told him that I loved him. That I forgave him, even though I hadn’t yet. The next day, his hospice nurse started taking tubes out of him. I imagined fingers on a jar, twisting, struggling to open it. Tubes exit body. The jar has been opened. Heart monitor beeps slowly. The creature begins to creep along the edge of the jar on legs smaller than a sewing needle. Sounds exit his body, typical but they sound like cymbals crashing. I still hear them in my ears. The butterfly stands on the edge where the entrance of the jar meets the sky. “Go,” I whisper to them both, “free yourself.” Translucent wings extend, and all is quiet.