Why Butterfly?

“Feet, what do I need you for, when I have wings to fly?”

—Frida Kahlo

When I was a little girl, I chased butterflies with my grandfather.

“Don’t touch their wings,” he would say, gently reminding me every time we were together, which was every other weekend in those days. “If you do, they won’t be able to fly.”

Most times, the soft net we used to catch them didn’t injure them, and we could release them. Other times, not. And that’s probably why I never went after the most beautiful ones, too stunned by the intricate design of their wings and their delicate disposition. Watching them fly—flit about, really; not in a straight line ever, but to and fro, up and down, as if in a wavelength to reach their destination—was like watching the physical rhythm of a song. If a butterfly’s wings were clipped—if the proverbial fairy dust covering them was tarnished—and they couldn’t fly, they would die. The thought of nature’s beauty and ingenuity—a wonder of creation to me at such a young age—being ruined, even with one of its smallest creatures, merely an insect actually, was too much to handle. Because I never saw butterflies as bugs in the first place. They were different. They were magic.

We’d catch them and then release them, or sometimes we’d put them in a little insect “motel,” a semi-circular wooden cage with a metal screen that let air and sunshine in, but wouldn’t let the butterflies out. My grandfather made these in his workshop, which sat behind the house my grandparents built in the 1960s and had lived in ever since. The house was bright green with white rock. Bright green, painted by my grandfather himself. It sat like a beacon on top of a huge hill on my grandparent’s land, which, when I was a girl, seemed to go on forever: a giant wonderland amidst a sea of bluebonnets, in which we’d frolic—and pecan trees, from which we’d collect pecans, crack them in my grandfather’s mechanical nutcracker, peel, and eat. And any kid of bug, from daddy long legs, to ladybugs, to walking sticks, to my grandfather’s bees, which he kept on the side of that big hill in a rectangular honeycomb. He collected honey from it wearing a hazmat suit. And there were lots of butterflies. Especially those.

The little motels my grandfather made were actually called “Roach Motels,” but we never used them for roaches. We kept pet butterflies. But if we didn’t let the butterflies fly free again, soon enough, they died. Soon enough, we didn’t keep them at all, but simply watched, and chased, and marveled. There were so many. They loved the big hill, and the flowers—and I think, like all the other inhabitants of that hill, they loved my grandfather. He was always careful during chrysalis, pointing out the cocoons hanging from the trees, lowering his voice and slowing his cadence as he did so, perhaps afraid that we would wake them. He protected them. He wanted to make sure they reached metamorphosis. Otherwise, they’d be incomplete.

He also kept a large bird house standing tall on the hill, where martins—which I called “his” birds—made their home. When the martins left each year, he’d clean the birdhouse out and plug up the holes so no other birds could enter. When the martins were about to migrate back to the hill, he unplugged the holes so they could build nests, and lay eggs, and have babies.

When I was little, I understood that those birds and their babies would eat the very caterpillars that became butterflies; that those caterpillars weren’t going to make metamorphosis, and thus, those butterflies weren’t going to make it. That instead, like the little insect motels, life could be catch and release, touch and go, flits and starts—and even though it seems like my grandfather had created his own ecosystem up on that big hill, he couldn’t control what the birds ate, or if all their eggs hatched, or if all their babies learned how to fly; which of his bees might sting him, if the caterpillars found a safe space for chrysalis, nor what the butterflies looked like when they emerged from their cocoons. He jut kept nurturing the hill as if tilling soil, always with respect for the land and its inhabitants, always with a kind of quiet, subdued awe of what he observed. Maybe this is how, as an adult, he kept his sense of wonder, and certainly how he taught it to me. A connection with nature is one of the greatest ways to do that, when you realize that what has been created naturally, right here in front of you, is amazing. That what is produced, both in spite of and because of life’s trials and errors, is no less than a miracle.

It was this connection to nature that was my grandfather’s portal for his connection to himself. His work on the land, his work in his workshop, and all his other creative endeavors, from painting the bright green house to making blankets and sweatshirts for his grandchildren, and how that work intersected with his creativity, was the source of his peace. It was his meditation. As I sit in my cozy little writing studio, a dedicated space eclectically decorated and curated to inspire my own creativity, I realize the bastion of what my grandfather showed me. How much we are the same. And that I’m picking up where he left off.

Each generation is an evolution, a metamorphosis of the ones who came before them.

We are the previous generation’s resurrection, their hope, their emblematic new life. We begin where they end. And perhaps if we choose—because once we are adults and have domain over our own lives, and learn how to foster our own creativity, and learn how to be resilient and strong, it is a choice—we roam like a song through life.

We are butterflies.

But life’s not always light. The heaviness with which we deal is what clips our wings.

“The nuns taught us there are two ways through life, the way of Nature and the way of Grace. You have to choose which one to follow. Grace doesn’t try to please itself. Accepts being slighted forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things.”

—Terrence Malick, THE TREE OF LIFE

My father had two shining children, plus a beautiful wife blessed with inherent modesty who worked a full-time job as a teacher while using every reasonable opportunity to pull in more money on the side by sponsoring school organizations, tutoring, teaching Driver’s Ed, and by going back to school in the evenings to get her Master’s. My brother and I rarely got into trouble, made stellar grades, were officers in clubs, on varsity sports, did our chores, loved our families, and were respectful. We all made a beautiful picture on every Christmas card, and while the holidays were always wonderful, the in-between days were when the mother and the children were anxious, constantly plugging the dam to prevent the flood, and were when the father drank and smoked himself to sleep at night and in the morning, he didn’t want to wake up. But he always did. He always had a shower, a perfect shave, and a pristine outfit. His “combo,” he called it: a heavily starched long-sleeved button down, a gorgeous tie, slacks, decorative dress socks, spotless dress shoes. It was one of the few creative outlets he had in his job selling Cadillacs. A man who was actually an artist. A very different vision from what he’d had for his life. Not to say that every day was near to shatter, but that often they were barely held together, if only by the sheer will of the parents and the naivete of the children, who knew no differently than dysfunction, and so did not know to be sad. That what I was actually feeling under the layers of my own scholastic and athletic achievement was a fractured sense of belonging, melancholy, and worthlessness. That there’s a name for this: clinical depression.

The bad flitted in and out. Mostly, it was tender and fragile, somehow buttressed with incredible, enduring strength. There was joy and laughter, basketball and cards, music and art. Sacred Christmas traditions; overflowing Easter baskets; grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins; our own cheering sections at track meets; family dinners; elaborate brunches. In spite of it all, and because of it all, we were infinitely loved. At the end of the day, that was everything.

In spite of everything, and because of everything, our family was in constant metamorphosis, continuously recovering and morphing as a result of every set back, every angry comment, every passive aggressive mood, every sale not won, every project not perfect, every time the house was messy, or relationships got messy. Or when my uncle drunk drove into our mailbox, and then one day, at the age of thirty-eight, had a heart attack in the shower and died.

Every little, or monumental, death.

What you don’t understand when it’s happening is that every little, or monumental, death is happening to you, forcing you to become something else.

Happening to you, and you must face it. You must accept it and associate it into your life as part of your living personality so that you can move forward and grow into the next evolution of yourself. A full evolution, or perhaps just a slight iteration. Metamorphosis.

The full metamorphosis of humanity from birth to death is daily, by the hour, by the minute, and utterly remarkable; the result of millions of decisions, millions of responses to events, not pre-programmed, but the result of free will. You may not choose what happens to you, but you choose how you respond to it, and it’s often a waterfall of choices you make that gets you into any situation. And yet, the situation seeming your fate, you can still choose what you do, how you do it, what lesson you’ll learn from it, and where you’ll go from there.

The meaning of Butterfly With The Day is to ride the rhythm of the wave. I was a child when I created this phrase while woodworking in my grandfather’s workshop. When I became an adult, so much of the phrase was lost to me and felt stupid. But it’s actually quite meaningful when you think about how hard you have to work mentally and emotionally, how deeply you have to dig, how much you have to feel, to transcend, in order to evolve and go on when times are tough or tragic.

Metamorphosis. It’s sublime.

Each romantic break-up broke me, each career ending wrought me anew, and I died a little each time I ran after a dream that didn’t come true. In my twenties, there was the partying. Then there were the miscarriages, the littlest deaths that were the biggest. There was the cross country move from Texas to Wisconsin, leaving everyone and everything I ever knew, then having a second baby, losing my pillar of a father-in-law, and enduring the coldest winter ever.

There were times I almost died physically—little deaths potentially becoming bigger than surreal: climbing up the side of the rock quarry and losing my grip at 14, my 18th birthday, the abusive boyfriend, the very late night at 23.

The ambulance ride to the hospital at 39 in my 32nd week of pregnancy as my third son’s heart rate plummeted. My mind couldn’t conceive of losing my son. It wasn’t what I thought at all, as if such a possibility were literally expunged from the universe. My only thoughts were calming my breathing and preparing for an emergency C-section. That he would have trouble breathing and go to the NICU. That he would be small.

His name is Jackson. He recovered and made it full term. He’s a toddler now, bounding around the house after his big brothers, mimicking their every move, learning tons of new words, giggling with boundless joy, smiling with gap teeth, bouncing his tight ringlet curls.

“Alker,” he calls Walker, his oldest brother, because he can’t pronounce the “W.”

“Eeves,” he calls Reeves, his middle brother, because he can’t pronounce the “R.”

We’re all carrying so much pain and so many secrets. Sharing mine with you, right now, is in some ways a death. Of the Macy who kept things hidden. Of an inauthentic self. Of the image you may have of me because of my good grades, or my last name, or what I look like.

But if you never share, then you’ll never have your little death, and you’ll be static. You won’t realize your Becoming.

Change, and emerge. Release, so you can transform.

“How to describe what humans look like to us! I’ve tried to describe it a little, when I spoke of Nicki’s beauty the night before as a mixture of movement and color … Beautiful, that’s what any human being is to us, if we stop to consider it, even the old and the diseased, the downtrodden that one doesn’t really ‘see’ in the street. They are all like that, like flowers ever in the process of opening, butterflies ever unfolding out of the cocoon.”

—Anne Rice, THE VAMPIRE LESTAT

If I could say anything to that little girl who chased butterflies with her grandfather, it would be that life would be born anew many times, would change direction many times, and to acknowledge all the hard work it took to get to where I’m at, even if it wasn’t where I intended.

What’s here for you? Look for it. It’s waiting to be found. Maybe we will never completely find ourselves, but perhaps life is that we always keep looking. Keep evolving. Mend our wings, tattered from each and every little death, and keep going to your own song.

Each day is like every arc of every scene in every chapter in every act of every story, that make up the bigger events that define us. A series that adds up to a crash, a series of crashes that adds up to a crisis, a series of crises that create your life story. At the bottom of every crash is a moment—after the purging of grief, and the anger, and the desolation—where suddenly, everything is quiet and feels more clear. It may not seem like we have a choice at this moment, but we can either choose to continue storming, or break free and forge a new path. Help, or hurt. Create, or destroy. Those are our choices. Our life, our identity, is a collection of these.

Think of the solar system and of atoms, which are fundamentally, elementally alike. The planets revolve around the sun, as electrons revolve around the atom’s nucleus. What’s more, an inconceivable number of microscopic atoms make up every planet in the solar system. And everything on those planets. Christopher Nolan’s film INTERSTELLAR presents a wonderful metaphorical physical representation of this: the more you look inside creation, the more you see smaller versions of the same, beyond infinity. The grand design of the universe is on purpose. The physical is an analogy for the spiritual; in each of us, in all of creation, from animals to plants to planets, are microcosms of our grand macrocosmic existence. Nature is metaphor. Human evolution and metamorphosis are just different versions of the same, the first occurring over thousands of years, the second over a lifetime.

That means that every day, every moment, there’s an opportunity to create who you are.

Like all of us, I’ve re-created myself so many times that I’ve lost count. I’ve re-established myself in new environments, shifted my paradigms of who I am and of what is most important, made new friends, become a student, become a job title, become a wife, become a mother, and learned new skills. Skills I often boot-strapped by jumping in head first.

If you feel like you need to slow down, do it.

If someone tells you they need a minute, listen.

Rest. Recover. Recharge. You’re in metamorphosis.

Anyone can enjoy the good times—and the good times are amazing and nourishing—but it’s how you handle your pain that makes you who you are. How you transform through your pain is your metamorphosis. Yours alone, a strength and a power that can’t be taken away.

If you harness your rejuvenative energy, you realize that little deaths aren’t failures. They’re signs. Data points to translate what life tells you about who you were, who you are, what is and isn’t working for you, and how you can move forward. They’re opportunities to change course and, in the smallest or in the biggest of ways, reinvent your life.

On tour for her book BECOMING, Former First Lady Michelle Obama was asked what it was like to get back to normal life after leaving the White House. She said, quite simply, that there was no going back to the way things were, because things had forever changed. There was only the new path, and she was on it. Mrs. Obama realized that only by continuing forward could she transform. What’s done is past, but it’s always an integral part of who we are. Progress comes in fits and starts, and often we endure the same lesson in a different context so the universe can be certain we learn it.

You are not alone.

We are all in this COVID-19 reality together, which has markedly altered our way of life on a global scale. There is much to mourn. People we’ve lost, businesses and organizations that are shuttered, closed schooling for our children. Just remember that this won’t last forever, that there are still new beginnings at every moment. It is never too late. And it’s an opportunity for you to shift your paradigms, use creativity as a tool for resilience, and figure out how to use this time to your advantage. The lack of social opportunities and the sense of eternal hibernation have been a great asset for me in working on my novel. Dig in. You can.

The Anniversary of September 11 was a few weeks ago. 19 years ago, our entire world imploded as we watched the Twin Towers fall. To commemorate that day and honor those whose lives were lost, and because I wanted to feel it—really feel it—I listened to the recording of Flight Attendant Betty Ong, who was on Flight 11, minutes before it crashed into the World Trade Center. She calmly reported the hijacking, patiently answering what now feel like foolish, wasteful questions from Air Traffic Control, who clearly had no idea of the seriousness of the situation—for, how could they? Clearly, they weren’t prepared. But Betty Ong was prepared, and in the last moments of her life, she was the epitome of strength and grace. She was enlightened. So good, that she was holy. She was a butterfly undergoing her last metamorphosis.

Six years ago, on September 11, 2014, my best friend’s daughter was born. Because this is modern times with modern drugs and the ability to schedule C-sections, my best friend could have chosen not to give birth on that infamous day, but she did it anyway, because any day that her daughter was born would have been the best day. It’s perhaps the greatest gift she’s given any of us: something to be absolutely joyful about, on the other side of a historical, life-altering, unspeakable traumatic experience. Now September 11th is a new day, because of a miracle. And because of a choice. The day hasn’t lost its gravity, nor its meaning, but is enriched and made even more beautiful as life goes on, profoundly beautiful because it’s both happy and sad.

We must receive all of it, arms open.

Wings open.

What will you create anew today?