Lost Butterflies

Yesterday we visited the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota.  On the grounds, among all the lovely plantings, is an art gallery.  The paintings currently on exhibit are watercolors of plants and animals.  Also displayed in the gallery was a case of butterflies, all beautifully mounted.  I cannot see a case of mounted butterflies without a flashback to my childhood.

From the second grade through my senior year in high school, I had a friend with whom I competed academically.  We seesawed back and forth for top grades in every subject.  When his grades were higher, I never was jealous.  I was, however, somewhat envious of ideas to which he was exposed and of which I was ignorant.

His parents were college-educated and mine were not.  I would sometimes realize that he was aware of the existence of a body of knowledge to which I had not the slightest exposure.  I remember him coming to school and talking about fossils.  I had never heard of a fossil, and he had been out hunting for them.

So it was with butterflies.  He brought to school a couple of cases of butterflies.  They were properly mounted in secure cases, so that they could be easily seen, but not damaged.  I knew I couldn’t afford such lovely display settings, but I figured I could come up with a poor man’s version.

Of course, this was in “ancient” times when there was no internet, so I turned to books to learn how to catch and preserve butterflies and other insects.  We used fountain pens to write with at that time, and the ink with which they were filled came in glass bottles which had a little well at the top edge.  One would tilt the bottle to put ink in the little well and then fill the pen from the well.  From books I learned that I could use an old ink bottle, place the insect in the bottle and some noxious liquid (I don’t remember what) in the well.  The fumes killed the insect and the wings could then be spread and the insect/butterfly displayed.  I fashioned my display cases out of shallow cardboard boxes lined with cotton. 

I don’t remember how many butterflies and other insects I had collected when disaster struck.  I had been away….probably to summer camp, and when I returned, I took my collection off the shelf above my desk.  To my horror, I discovered that in my absence, a mouse had obviously checked out my collection.  The wretched creature had eaten all of the bodies and left behind the apparently unpalatable wings, along with his numerous droppings.

I was sad….very, very sad.  I don’t think I cried, because I always tried not to cause my mother any pain.  She understood my desire to learn anything and everything new.  She was grieved when I couldn’t have the tools to learn that others had or the quality and variety of clothing that some of my friends owned.   I never wanted her to be sad, but I can still remember my own sadness.  It wasn’t just the loss of the collection.  I felt the social and economic difference between my friend and me.  We were intellectual equals, but he was a rung above me.  He never behaved that way, but I felt it.

So, yesterday I looked at the display of butterflies securely behind glass, unavailable to marauding rodents, and thought about my childhood sadness.  I also thought about the life I have lived during the past 55 years.  I grew up, became a nurse, used those skills to pay my way through college, married a truly wonderful man, worked when I wanted to, and stayed home with children when I wanted to,  I have had a great deal more happiness than sadness in my life.  I am grateful to the gracious and loving God who has gone before me paving the way.  The lost butterflies are a tiny blip of past sadness that now brings a smile.   But, I really hate mice.