Butterfly metaphor: the leftover goop

We LOVE to use the butterfly when we talk about people dying or people being transformed in huge ways. But nobody talks about the bloody goop that's part of the process of metamorphosis.

Because, I guess, it's pretty yucky.

On the face of it, if you look at the big salient bits, it's a nice image: caterpillar becomes butterfly. MAGIC. NATURE. Faith. We have lots of explanations.

So the living person is transformed into -- so much more beautiful! -- a soul. And the person who's being transformed -- hoorah! gets some rest time inside their chrysalis. We can use that. It's a good metaphor.

My daughter got a butterfly kit for her birthday, though. It was upsetting enough to me that she wanted to keep the butterflies indoors as pets, and didn't care that this would shorten their lives. Kids are cute, right? They have to learn their own lessons. OK, I chose not to fight that battle.

We watched most of it happen and it was some damn metaphor, really.

It was also gross. I have heard that the creature inside the chrysalis is a sort of chimeric soup... neither caterpillar nor butterfly. I tried, hard, not to visualize what it was doing in there, the pretty capsule that it wove from its own excretions. None of this, of course, was covered in the friendly brochure packed with the kit.

I knew my daughter was fascinated that seeing the wings emerge and dry would be something like seeing a human being born. But I had no idea the image would actually be fairly complete.

Because no one told me to expect the trail of bloody, mucus-y gook that would trail from the cocoons down the mesh of the butterfly habitat, leaving a brutal stain over the adorable pink flowers on its floor. 

Then the little light went on. I thought, how like my life.

It's been six years and I'm not a butterfly yet. There's a long period of living as something indeterminate on the way to whatever it is that's new. Living through loss and reaching middle age gives me access to the drudgery of deep work on who I am and how I was formed, that I might have avoided if Gavin hadn't died. (Maybe. Probably not.)

I can't be afraid of things being messy. I shouldn't be surprised that it takes a long time to change... if I really pay attention, I know I'm pretty different than I was 20 years ago (really substantially) and that there are more than three stages of growth, that caterpillar-chrysalis-butterfly was never really MY story.

And I'm not in such a murk, really. I get things done, I have a good life, life is immeasurably easier than it was during infertility, Gavin's illness, single parenting, or forming a new relationship.

I guess what I'm really saying is, it would be great if the common myth was, not that you change into a butterfly (or anything magical or natural sounding like that) but that human growth is big and slow: if the common wisdom was, not that it takes a year and then you fall in love and grief goes away, but that it takes five to seven years (at minimum) to build a new life after loss. And that it takes five to seven years for a step family to begin to gel.

It's slow. It has a bunch of stages, and some of them are dark and some of them are drippy. Sometimes a natural metaphor that you really like just doesn't fit. And it doesn't happen on its own.... it kind of hurts to grow.

And that goop is perfectly natural, you know you will leave some things behind and you won't always be pretty.  It's not a bad thing to be fascinated with it or to be pissed that the brochure didn't give you the whole story. You have to live with ambiguity, with muck and darkness. And someday, you will even fly, drink from flowers, and rest on dewy leaves, your true colors unfurled in the sunlight.

At least, if a scientifically-inclined 8-year-old doesn't insist on keeping you in the guest room for all 3 weeks that remain of your life.

Epilogue: After a fair amount of motherly nagging, my daughter agreed to let the last three butterflies "smell the air outdoors" from inside the habitat, and eventually gave two their freedom. (They probably got a few days.)

Musical Monday: Man in the Mirror

Once again, today, I sat before a mental health professional as they marvelled at the fact that I was alive. I felt, again, like the subject in the Natalie Merchant song, Wonder (a song I've found puzzling enough to never own though it would be so glorious to fit into it...).

Maybe there was less gawking than just pure appreciation. The disbelief part comes from within me, because I can hardly remember how bad I've had it, how crazy my world has been, especially for the year plus after Gavin died. Things seem so easy now -- they're not -- but I don't take credit for making my way through the muck and bricks and hurt of that time. I think so often of the caregiving, I ponder who I was at various points, what did I know? What was he thinking? Death and life and the big stuff. I turn these images over and over like minerals shifting color with the light.

And also, I have this concentric circles idea, that hurt and healing have led me back to finding a truer self and a path that has been nearly forgotten. That the farther I get from loss, the larger my life looks, the wider a perspective I can take, and the more I can heal from other damages, earlier and really really old. Somehow at this long view reminds me I'm not so old, really.

I'm still changing, and maybe even faster now, and it's still a load of work. So I heard Man in the Mirror on the radio today with fresh ears, irritated by today's burst of sunlight. Spring is playing with us, but our bodies must respond. I am stimulated and remembering how dark it was, how strong I must be, and contemplating as I usually am, the "what's next."

Man in the Mirror! Of all the superficial crap. I remember how that song sounded when it came out: like a distraction. It seemed to wiseass me that America had asked, "Mr. Jackson, have you had extensive plastic surgery to make you look like Diana Ross?" and received the answer: "HEY LOOK AT AFRICA." The song was not a pinnacle of honest self-assessment, and coming after the joys of Thriller and (especially -- my bliss!) Off The Wall... the whole album, Bad, just looked like a post-Michael-Jackson album.

Then again, who's a harsher critic than a student at a liberal-arts college?

Maybe I can have some empathy for what poor Michael went through to get there. Maybe I can listen to what he's saying. Maybe he has a good point.

Maybe I can look in the mirror, take credit for where I've been, and just... start.

Turning the corner on grief

How do you know when you're turning the corner on grief?, they ask. There's hope and confusion in their eyes. And who wouldn't want the pain to end? But I can't lie and say, "On day one of year two, you will be all fixed up." I would never say that; they believe it anyway. (I believed it too. We must all make it up with our good imaginations.) And you can't tell them time makes any difference, even though it's totally true, because they will hit you. I might say, "give it time," and "I'm not sure there's really a corner, but you will feel better one day."

Here's what it felt like to be turning the corner on grief:

• I had more good days than bad days.
• I started to get ideas about things I wanted to do next.
• I began to feel that my loss was not the worst thing that ever happened to anyone.
• I had urges to see friends, exercise, clean up, and change things around.
• I started to be able to help other people.

Some people mention that they start to be able to see things in color again, or they start to taste food again (which usually results in their being disgusted that they ate Cheerio's for dinner 6 months straight, but whatever. Accept and move on!)

I think what's important is knowing that for most of us, it's not dramatic, nor even a single event. (We say "grief is not linear," but seriously, is anything in life linear?) For most of us, we say we feel like we're going "two steps forward, one step back," (often, "two back and one forward"). We say it's a bumpy road, or a rollercoaster. We say it's better when the peaks are higher and the valleys are less low. Most valuable is knowing that the time scale is incredibly long: no matter how long "grief" lasts, it's not unusual for it to take several years to get to a stable place where you smile a lot. But it's not linear: you're not inconsolable and disabled and an open wound the entire time. You keep changing and the world keeps moving too, and sometimes you are in sync with it.

Sometimes you can find a perfect metaphor even if it doesn't QUITE fit. This story about the wonderful Frog and Toad (by Arnold Lobel) captures at least one tiny bit of it perfectly: that progress happens when things just keep moving along, however they will, and whatever you think you're looking for, keep your eyes open to the world around you.

My daughter hates it when story time makes me cry but these gentle little reptiles always get me in the gut. Toad has been soaked in the rain, and Frog shares a story about how his father told him to buck up, "spring is just around the corner:"

"I wanted Spring to come.
I went out
to find that corner.
I walked down a path in the woods
until I came to a corner.
I went around the corner
to see if Spring was on the other side."
"And was it?" asked Toad.

"No," said Frog.
"There was only a pine tree,
three pebbles and some dry grass.

I walked
in the meadow.
Soon I came to
another corner.
I went around the corner
to see if Spring was there."

"Did you find it?" asked Toad.

"No," said Frog.
"There was only
an old worm
asleep on a
tree stump."

(I love that worm. I love Frog and Toad so much).

And so on. Four corners, and spring is not around any of them. Disappointed, tired, Frog heads home as it starts to rain.

"When I got [home]," said Frog,
"I found another corner.
It was the corner of my house."

"Did you go around it?"
asked Toad.

"I went around that corner, too,"
said Frog.

"What did you see?"
asked Toad.

"I saw the sun coming out,"
said Frog. "I saw birds
sitting and singing in a tree.
I saw my mother and father
working in their garden.
I saw flowers in the garden."

"You found it!" cried Toad.

"Yes," said Frog.
"I was very happy.
I had found the corner
that Spring was just around."

(The entire delicious story is online here.)

And why do I love this? Because what makes spring come... is not so much the effort it takes to look around all those corners (although doing so is unavoidable) ... but the work it takes to plant a garden.

So keep hope in your eyes... but keep those peepers open, peeps, especially when things are changing. Spring's a-comin'.

Pictureless Wednesday: Spring will come.

Mommy, why are the trees all pink?

I wouldn't call it a storm, but peculiar precipitation last night,  neither sleet nor hail, and strange conditions all morning, had left a quarter inch of ice balls fused into a layer on every tree branch. As we drove, the trees bending down in front of us, arching into our airspace, were iced with the gentlest brownish-grayish-pink. This in addition to the light dusting of sugar on everything else around, and a specially gray day.

It was a somehow natural color. Behind the pink clouds, suspended water and sunlight, itself barely visible, brought out the variety of browns in the wood: reddish brown, yellowish brown for some grasses, deep greenish on some trunks, pale brown and white on the paulownias. And an infinite variety of shades in between.

Why? Because those are buds, dear. Thanks -- I wouldn't have noticed! The red buds of some kinds of trees, invisible a few days before, were magnified by their ice shields. A tiny bit of color, invisible yesterday, was made brighter in the light refracted by water.

The small ones are cherries, the large, red maples. A few tiny Japanese maple-types in yards, usually standing sentry over a rock.

They were all around us as we drove. And then, on the way out of the play date, it was too late. The ice bits, millions, had melted off or fallen. No special effect. No photograph. Nature is always ephemeral, but it's not worth risking my life to take a picture on the road. I'm going to hang on to this place.

I kept my eyes open. A few errands later, some maples looked like they were fatter now: swollen with water as the day warmed.

I missed the picture, but I can spread the words: Spring will come. Look up outside. It's a promise.

Why is a widow like a mermaid?

I always say that widows are like mermaids.

After my loss, I lived half in each of two worlds: that of the living, and that of the dead.

Learning to live with loss was like learning to swim. In some ways, I could use that big tail to go further. Eventually, it felt like dancing in water: I liked the new environment with its eternal closeness, the bright colors, the dark, the intensity. Above all, its freedom.

There was something very ramped up and sexy, and yet very asexual about being a widow for a while. I had the hormonal effects but still felt tethered, though my mate was absent.

She's half natural, part wild. The mermaid never "gets." Mermaids do spend all their time longing, don't they? Especially the Little one.

I suspected that if I seduced a man (in my case, it would never be by singing), he might be dashed on the rocks and we'd both go without.

Eventually I felt more comfortable in the water than on land. Like Andersen's water maiden, I might never feel at home among again. A fish out of water. 

In Andersen’s telling, the mermaid gets her wish, losing the tail and finding legs for land, but when she presses her sought-after shoes to the blessed street, the pain is excruciating. Her two feet become just stumps of the tail God gave her. (I’m skipping over so many delicious analogies and interpretations to make my point.). In the end, Andersen's girl becomes a creature of neither land nor sea, but air. (I don't think anyone is satisfied by this ending, neither fairytale nor Hollywood. Hell, Disney even lets her dance, smiling at her happy ending.)

Something about this state of unbelonging, of airborneness, stayed even after I got my legs — after I walked on land again. And though my legs were wobbly for a bit, I wouldn't say it was true pain.

I'm not sure if I'll ever fit in again, whether I'll be transformed permanently, complacently like the Disney girl, but I'm pretty sure I won't suffer endlessly for my love (I guess this would be my second husband, if I follow my own metaphor) and the change I so wanted.


Do you want to return to the land of the living? Is swimming in grief comfortable, even luscious?