STORYTIME TAPESTRY

The Newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world

Special Treat ??“ Debra Shiveley

June 1, 2005

Sometimes Life is a Metaphor

Debra Shiveley

Every spring, Chris and I order butterfly caterpillars. We have an inexpensive, one gallon aquarium where we keep them safe and snug while they munch themselves to ten times their size, finally go into chrysalis and then - the butterfly.

Usually everything goes very well. We watch them with awe...eagerly awaiting the beautiful painted lady butterfly we know will emerge. They hatch??¦they dry their wings ... then Chris, oh so carefully, places them on his finger and releases them outside. He always says  Goodbye my baby  Be happy  Be safe 

Well, this year things didn't turn out the way we'd hoped. We got our 5 caterpillars and gave them a snug safe ???womb??? in which to develop. We watched them with delight as they grew and grew, finally made that long journey up the sides of their jars to the lid, and formed their  "j" to go into the chrysalis stage. With anticipation, we awaited the hatching, eager to see those beautiful orange and black wings spread out in flight. But something went wrong.

Two butterflies were born with mangled, twisted wings. They couldn't fly. I waited for a day, giving them sugar water, to see if the process was just taking longer than usual. Things didn't improve. Finally I took them out into the bright sunlight thinking that God's healing sun would dry their little wings. That's when I noticed they didn't have all of their legs. Sadly I told Chris to put them in the rose garden and leave them, hoping he wouldn't be there to see the inevitable: a bird swooping down to capture them to feed her young. Such is the way of nature I reasoned. It's the only way.

As Chris was dutifully taking them down to place them by the roses, totally innocent of what I was asking him to do to his beloved butterflies, it occurred to me: nature doesn't HAVE to be this way. They don't have to be ???perfect??? in the literal sense of the word. If they couldn't pollinate and procreate, their right to exist wasn't automatically negated. They could be just themselves, giving pleasure to a 6-year-old little boy who loved them and was willing to turn them loose simply for their own good.

Yes, their wings are mangled, and they flop when they try to walk, but they have their own beauty, their own value, their own  perfection.

We're keeping the butterflies until they die a natural death. It will be hard for Chris when they die. He can't look for them next spring, thinking that every painted lady he sees is his beloved Sam or Lou...but he will learn a very valuable lesson, and I'm pleased to learn it with him.

You see, Chris is adopted.  We were the seventh couple called.   He was headed for Children's Services because he wasn't  perfect.  Chris was born with a moderately severe unilateral cleft of the lip, gum, and hard and soft palates. When he was carrying his butterflies down to the rose garden, I suddenly thought --  What if Chris had been abandoned because he wasn't 'perfect'?   My beautiful son, thank God, was not.

D. E. Shiveley

Copyright 1999

D. E. Shiveley
Merribuck @merribuck.com

About Me:

Hello, my name is Debra Welch.  I'm 52 and the very proud mother of a soon-to-be 13 year old son named Christopher.

Christopher is adopted, so I have some writings on the subject, and he was born with a moderately severe unilateral clefting of the lip, gums and hard and soft palates.  He is beautiful!  Chris also has learning differences: ADD, Dysgraphia, and Executive Function and Working Memory Deficit.  He is the joy of our lives.

I have been writing since age nine.  My father came to visit and plopped down a pad of paper and a pencil.  "Write me a poem," he said "and call it 'Poetry Problems.'"  This is when I learned that my father and great grandfather both wrote poetry.  I was being tested.

I have just finished co-authoring a novel with my cousin titled "Jesus Gandhi Jetta Mae Adams," a murder mystery set in Columbus, Ohio and am starting my second novel.

It's good to meet you all.