nee wood

I thought of you over the weekend while I flipped through prints of oil paintings of a painter who usually paints cats. I stopped when I saw the frog. I held it, examined it, knowing I was living in a moment you would have yourself if you were here. Maybe it is you enjoying the moment yourself. The frog was exaggerated (like they always are) and placed simply in the middle of the five by seven piece of cardboard. I thought about how it would be the perfect thing to buy you as a gift. I held it in my hand while I continued leafing through the stack. I would have bought it anyway, but I knew I shouldn't spare the money. I found a print of a half cat, half butterfly; kept on flipping til the vibrant orange of the unmistakable monarch butterfly's wing caught my eye. Monarchs.
Too many words it would take to say everything about the monarchs. We took them as caterpillars, yellow white & black, watched them grow. Watched as they turned green and gold; sparkling until it became a shrively, shivering dampened orange butterfly. Watch them latch to the pink hibiscus flowers while they gained their strength and watched the liquid in their bodies fill their wings. Watched their wings open and close. Exercising their bodies for the flight of their lives. Watched until they grew strong enough strenth to leave the hibiscus and fly away forever. I wondered with all the coincidences of life, if unbeknownst to me I ever saw one I knew before. One I had helped come to be.
We didn't understand what went on it that cocoon. (I still don't) but every year they were treasures to be found. Tradition of mothers in a way. The sensation of finding the caterpillar, smaller than a pin, always stayed the same. Contrasting with the green milk weed leaf, a million times its size. We'd carefully pick the leaf off the plant and tiptoe home without even once the little yellow pin leaving our sight. They were so magical. I think of you now, everytime I see one. The frogs, the caterpillars. The butterflies. Its not so much a tradition anymore, but I still look everytime I see a milkweed plant, unsure of what I would do if I did find one.

I just wish you could have known how much you meant to me. Mean to me, even now.

I paid the man five dollars and bought the print of the monarch cat. Its for my mom, I declared. I placed it in my purse and noticed my hand on it, checking on it, repeatedly throughout the day. I felt you there that day.

Happy birthday.
you'd be 76.