Ending or Emergence

What is the monarch chrysalis up to, at this very moment? What’s happening inside here? From my perspective, chrysalises are very quiet. Of course, noise tolerance varies from being to being. Perhaps within the chrysalis, they are packing and moving metaphoric boxes, cleaning and scrubbing surfaces, using special tools to prepare for what is to come? 

We are tightly bound in a metaphoric chrysalis these days, wrapped up in just two small rooms on the first floor with limited access to two additional small rooms on the floor above. Our remodeling proceeds at a strong pace, with a solid beam in place across the kitchen and family room (“great room”), new flooring and cabinetry in place, and the plan for new countertops to be installed tomorrow. The end is in sight. We will burst forth into new beautiful living in the very near future. 

Yes, and.

I’m feeling edgy, confined, depleted. Trying to keep my heart and hope on the end goal. Washing blueberries in the bathroom gets relentlessly old. Maneuvering around non-working appliances in the living room, wiping dust from surfaces, negotiating plastic-wrapped doorways, yes, it’s reaching a frustrating crescendo. Our stress was all the more heightened when Tony had COVID a few weeks back, leaving us each relegated to two very small and separate places in this chrysalis of a house. I have to remind myself to breathe, stay present, know that good work is being done, and all will be well. Our structural issues have been repaired. We will have a beautiful space in the end. Breathe. 

I had a dear and painful conversation with an elderly friend the other day. She and her husband are moving into senior living, a transition deemed long overdue by their children but one that has been so challenging for the two of them to accept. In the midst of her downsizing work, she told me, “I am living through hell.” I tried to comfort, to reassure – yes, the shift itself is dreadful, but there would be comfort and ease in the end. It would be fine. It would be beautiful. 

I hope I soothed her – but what good are soft platitudes, really, in the midst of the exhaustion and loss of such transitions? 

Is it possible that some similar stress happens within a chrysalis? 

Monarchs and their gorgeous journeys are just outside my house, in a small flower bed I have squeezed in between the porch and the driveway. I have been planting this little bed for years, welcoming butterflies and bees and birds and bugs – and allowing me to fawn over all the beings from our porch. I plant a variety of perennials and annuals, lots of happy flowering plants, and I make changes to the bed from year to year. The milkweed was “a volunteer” I uprooted from the edge of my front yard along the road two years ago, and I crossed my fingers that it would flourish in the little flower bed. The milkweed is SO happy in this location.

Up close and personal like this, I have realized why my neighbor told me to move it to someplace less visible – it is a homely plant, the milkweed. It is not wispy and delicate and covered in flowers. It is large and clumsy. I never thought through its wild lifestyle, how tall and floppy it would grow, how it would fall over and try to nudge all the other plants to take leave. I’ve been corralling it into a limited space, forcing it to be a bit more prim and upright than it really prefers to be. The leaves are large and pale green and take on a deathly, depleted yellow cast as summer ends.  Most surprisingly, right at my eye level, it appears to have gonads – who wants to look right at these? 

Just as I was contemplating the neighbor’s advice…to transplant the milkweed this fall and make it a ‘wallflower’ somewhere in the back of my yard, not center stage in the flower bed…it began to teem with life. Over a dozen monarch caterpillars appeared almost overnight, climbing the stems, crawling on top, under, all around, munching all the while, leaving great, raggedy holes throughout the leaves – it was a monarch party! I have been enjoying every minute of it. 

A few days of wild munching and the caterpillars became so plump and large, slowed down, and hung very, very still from various branches, readying for the transformation into chrysalises.

Two dear caterpillars never completed the move to this new stage – I watched these brown and wither, and ants devour them bit by bit. Happy ants.

I have been able to observe six chrysalises – I have no doubt there are others that are hiding from my view. One has formed on my porch railing, oh my! Even the chrysalis is enchanting – sage green in color, with a thin line and several small dots of spun gold that catch the sunlight in this magical way. 

Yesterday, the first monarch butterfly appeared. I missed their emergence from the chrysalis, but recognized its slow, stunned wing movement as evidence that the butterfly was new to this world. I watched it flutter (tremble, really) along the porch wall for many minutes, and then it flew away. I know there will be more butterflies in the days to come – perhaps even today.

Milkweed is a plain, galumph of a plant and it is a bastion of beautiful life. Yes, and. I’m keeping it front and center in my garden. What a welcome source of joy in the midst of life’s many transitions.

It’s Tuesday and I’m participating in the Slice of Life. Thank you, Two Writing Teachers, for creating this supportive community of teacher writers.