The Butterfly Effect

Author's Note: This is really my sister-in-law's story, even though I wrote it. It is a work in progress.

The Butterfly Effect

They say that the flap of a butterflies’ wing can change the weather. Something so small, so quick, and so fragile that the very act of motion sends the exquisite insect fluttering on the breeze instead of soaring like a bird, and it turns out it is amazingly powerful. It’s part of a field of study known as “chaos theory”, something I can’t claim to be fully conversant with, but my husband might. He teaches mathematics at the local high school. I may not be a brilliant mathematician, but I have come to have my own theory about the butterfly effect. My theory involves life, and death, and metamorphoses, but it begins very simply, with my childhood love of a book.

I opened the cover. The imaginary but nonetheless real scent of sea salt and myrtle leaves arose from the printed pages. I could taste the salt and recognize the oily, pungent fragrance of what I thought myrtle would smell like.  Lemon, with a hint of something much less sweet.  Harrowsmith isn’t close to the ocean, nor had I ever seen a myrtle bush. But when my ten-year-old self opened Misty of Chincoteague, I was no longer in our old limestone farmhouse on Henderson Road, but on the Virginia shore with Paul and Maureen Beebe. On Chincoteague and Assateague islands, where the wild ponies grazed proud, wild, and free on the salt flats.

The memory was strong as I looked around our bed-and-breakfast on Chincoteague Island. The 1848 Island Manor House had been kind enough to indefinitely post-pone our original reservation. We -- my husband Pat and I -- had been planning a trip to Chincoteague to celebrate my 50^th birthday. Then tragedy struck. My mom, the person who taught me to bake pies, who would brush my long hair and who was, well, my mom, was diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and it came on fast.

The family gathered at her bedside in the hospital, their ranks swelled by friends and family who had been in the area to celebrate my niece’s wedding. My sister brought in the chrysalis of a monarch butterfly for mom to watch. She’d collected it on a walk by her cottage in Frontenac County, and brought in the milkweed essential for it to live, too. Mom had lost most of her ability to speak by then, but she would look at the jar with its chrysalis, and we hoped it would remind her of happier times when we were kids on the farm. When she was whole, surrounded by her family and friends, and dispensing her wisdom to those who came to seek her advice on everything from baking to babies. We had the house that everyone visited. When we were really young, we would pick her bouquets of dandelions or mayflowers, and she would put our weedy-but-bright offering in a swan-shaped vase on the table for everyone to admire.

My mom is the bravest woman I know. On September 1 that year, she chose to be disconnected from the ventilator that allowed her to breathe, in the full knowledge that she would not be able to breathe on her own. She chose to die. She did it surrounded by her family and, I hope, feeling the blanket of love, comfort, and longing we tried to weave for her. Through my tears, I saw that the chrysalis in the jar was gone. In its place was a magnificent monarch butterfly, gently testing its damp wings. Metamorphoses. What was death, after all, but the evolution of existence? Hello, mom, I whisper in my head. You’re beautiful.

And now, two years later, here we were on Chincoteague. We drive down from Kingston, the trip taking a couple of days. We talk about everyday things, like going back to work, but also about bigger things, like what we hope to achieve in the rest of our lives. We talk about legacy: What it means, and what we want ours to be. How we want to leave the world a better place than we found it. We are both schoolteachers, so we see how much influence teachers have on lives. But I didn’t want to rest there. My legacy, I decide, also has to do with happiness. Recognizing it when it appears, however elusive it is or how tiny it might seem. When my mom died, I’d felt as if colour had somehow been bleached from my life. I was living in a world of sepia. What made me happy? Because if I wasn’t happy, how could I expect to create a positive legacy?

We rent bikes so we can cycle to Assateague Island. As we leave, an artist is on the front step, painting one of the two graceful neo-classical columns that supported the deck overhead and provided the Manor House with welcome shade. The pattern of vines and purple flowers is lovely against the base colour of white. We set out, intent on the ponies and fulfilling a childhood dream. Misty, here I come, I think.

The ponies don’t seem to mind people. We find them everywhere, grazing by the side of the road and on the beach. In fact, some seem quite interested in us. One light-brown-and-cream stallion is as interested in Pat as Pat is in him, a kind of horse-human “bromance”. I take pictures of them together, of Pat taking pictures of the stallion. We sit on the beach to listen to the waves breaking hypnotically on the sand, and visit the lighthouse. Happiness seems close here. If I close my eyes and just be, I can feel its butterfly wings touch my face.

On the way back to our lodging, we stop at a gift shop. I want to buy something small to remind me of our trip on some cold winter morning in Ontario, when happiness seems a little further away, dancing on sunbeams in the south and not on snow crystals on my windshield when I am late for work. I pick up a calendar featuring the horses on Assateague, and I notice a wondrous thing: the stallion that had connected with Pat has a name: Legacy.

We cycle back to the Manor, thinking and talking about both our legacy and Legacy, contented with our day. As we reach the portico, I go to examine the work the artist has completed. I catch my breath. My heart beats a little faster. This morning’s work has been finished, but it’s not just a vine with purple flowers. The artist has added a butterfly. A monarch butterfly. She is here, I say in my head. Mom is here.

Next day, the artist is back to finish a few small details. I learn that her name is Diane. I tell her about my Mom, and how marvelous it was to come back to a Monarch butterfly. She listens intently. Then she tells me that when she was finished painting the flowers and vines, she thought that it needed something more. First, she thought of a hummingbird. But all of a sudden, the thought of a Monarch butterfly came fully formed into her head, and she knew for certain that was what she had to paint. “Your mom put that thought in my head”, she said. “She was here”.

I think it was Thoreau who wrote that happiness is like a butterfly. The more you chase it, the more it will evade you. But if you notice the other things around you, it will come and gently sit on your shoulder. Happiness is a way of ordering chaos. For me, it’s the butterfly effect.