BONNIE
Bonnie confronts the delicate balance between longing for connection and the inevitability of loss, as she reflects on relationships that, like butterflies, were beautiful yet fleeting and ultimately unable to be contained.
I shaded my eyes and looked up. My attention was always instinctively drawn upward whenever I heard an airplane. I hadn’t seen aerial advertising in ages and wondered how much such a romantic gesture must have cost. I didn’t even know people still did such things.
Little Topher was pushing his Tonka truck in the dirt next to me as I pulled weeds in my flower bed. He saw me stop and looked up to see what I was watching.
“What does that sign say, Mama?”
I squinted to read the banner trailing behind the airplane.
“It says: Will you marry me?” I answered, a lump in my throat.
“That’s silly,” Topher laughed. “Why would someone write it in the sky? Can’t they just say it? What if they didn’t see the message way up there?”
I hugged him. “For a 6-year-old, you sure are smart. I can’t imagine why someone wouldn’t just say it.”
But I did. Once upon a time, I asked the same question. As I gazed at the plane, I wondered about the woman for whom the sky message was written and the man who chose to ask by way of text. Part of me wept for her. Part of me rejoiced. But the biggest part of me sighed with relief, grateful it wasn’t my heart floating somewhere disembodied in the sky.
“Look down here, Mama,” my boy said mournfully, tugging at my jeans. I dropped down to his level and saw the butterfly under his truck’s wheel. “Did I kill it?”
“No, I don’t think so Sweetie. I think he was already dead before your truck ran him over,” I assured him. “Even if you did, it’s really impossible to avoid it. We can’t go our whole lives tip toeing around trying not to hurt them. There are so many flying around, you are bound to cause damage just by existing.”
The Toyota Tundra roared up the driveway, and Topher forgot all about his Tonka. He didn’t even notice the butterfly guts plastered to the front grill as my husband opened the creaky truck door.
“Daddy!” Topher screamed, forgetting his Tonka and smearing muddy hands all over his dad’s jeans.
Chris detached Topher from his leg and swung him up into a hug.
“I see you’ve been helping your mom in the butterfly garden,” he said.
“Yes, Mama said we needed to clean up their bedroom so they’ll want to stay for a while. But I don’t think butterflies sleep, do they?”
Chris chuckled and tossed a wink at me just as one flitted past them and joined its mates on a lantana bush. “No, they never sleep, but they do need to rest. I think your mom is just a little homesick and trying to invite some of her friends to come visit.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. He knew me.
* * *
It must have been fifteen years ago when I stood in that clearing, laughing uncontrollably, swinging the butterfly net through the air, swatting at the winged creatures breezing by. I had always just watched them swirling around me when I walked through the fields with Dad as a little girl. But that day, I was in my late twenties when my boyfriend David surprised me with a net to catch them. He stood there grinning at me, his own net hanging limp at his side.
"Why aren't you trying to catch them?"
"Because watching you do it is more fun."
I rolled my eyes. "Whoever thought up this net-strategy must never have actually tried it. I think it's easier in my imagination."
"You caught a few, Bonnie," he said to me, holding up the container we had transferred them to.
Getting them from the tangles of the net to the empty ice cream bucket had proven to be even more challenging than actually catching them. I scooped another monarch butterfly and brought it to David who plucked it by the wing and peeled it out of the net. He lifted the lid just enough to slip it inside without letting the others loose.
When we returned to David’s place, we put them in a fish tank we converted to a butterfly estuary. He had cleared the top of a workbench in his airplane hangar and I sat backwards in a chair with my chin on the top of the back, watching them flutter around. The top of the glass tank had a screen for a ceiling and some of the butterflies clung to it like indoor cats staring out of a window, longing to chase squirrels in the backyard.
"It hurts to watch them, doesn't it?" David said, passing by me on his way to get some tools. "I feel like that a lot, stuck in this hanger with nowhere to go. This was meant to be a rest stop, not a home base. I bet they wanna be out there as much as I do."
"Yeah, but for a different reason," I said. It had sounded like so much fun when David had presented me with the net. But my excitement had turned to regret as I imagined their angst. Sometimes, I felt stuck at David’s hangar too, when he picked me up by plane like whisking me away to his Fortress of Solitude, far from my own home and familiarity, without a mode of transportation of my own.
"Dad used to tell me they were in a hurry to get to their home before winter,” I started to explain. “Did you know they don't return to the place they came from after laying their eggs? Their offspring make that journey back, like carrying on their parents' legacy."
"Hmm." David’s head was under the hood of his airplane. He wasn't listening but I continued anyway.
"It's one of nature's miracles, Dad used to say. The next generation innately knows how to get to their summer destination. It’s like they have an inner homing beacon.”
On his way past me to his toolbox, he stopped at the butterfly habitat again. Tapping on the glass, he said, "I wonder if they still mate in captivity or if we should release them into the wild. My neighbor grows flowers to attract butterflies. We could release them in her garden."
I sighed, watching him walk back to his airplane, always working on machinery... Wings, for him, were the mode of getting places. Or escaping from them. For Dad, his aircraft was the destination itself. Our hangar had been next door to our house so he never had to be far from home.
* * *
The houses and bushes from 8,000 feet above looked like miniatures on a model railroad. I had loved peering out over the wing of my Dad’s Cessna, feeling like I was one of the birds. He took me up in the air every weekend with him when he decided to go flying. It was just something we always did, usually without any particular destination. Just up.
“It’s your turn. Take the wheel, Bonnie,” Dad had said to me.
“But I’m only 10! I can’t fly.”
“Sure you can,” he reassured me. “You’re my co-pilot. This will be your plane someday, and it’s never too early to learn how to fly it.”
My heart started racing. I put my hands on the wheel in front of me like Dad’s was on his side. But then he took his hands off of his wheel and my back stiffened.
“I’m scared,” I said. “I don’t think I’m ready for this. My tummy feels like flipping pancakes.”
“That’s called butterflies. You’re nervous, and that’s normal. But think of when you learned to ride a bike. It’s kinda like that, only you don’t need to worry about your balance right now. We are going straight so you just need to hold it steady.” He reached over and put a hand on mine. “You’re doing great!”
I stared ahead in concentration, and we just sat there in silence for several minutes, my heart thudding. Dad patted my hand before taking it away. I remember when he was teaching me to ride my bike, running along side me, and then he let go and I was riding solo.
“See? You’re doing it all by yourself. But I’m right here to take the wheel whenever you need me to.”
I had been holding my breath and let out an exhale, knowing my dad was still in charge and he wouldn’t let me lose control. I loosened my grip on the wheel and my shoulders dropped of their own accord.
“Can we go higher?”
Dad smiled and said, pointing to the wheel, “Gently pull back on the yoke.”
My hands started to shake, scared I was going to pull too hard and make our aircraft stall like I’d seen in the movies. I slowly pulled and watched the nose of the plane rise slightly. Dad reached down and started rolling something on the floor that looked like a coin on its side sticking out of the floor. I’d seen him do this before but now that I had the wheel, I wondered what he was doing.
“I’m adjusting the trim which works in opposition of the primary flight control to create the perfect yoke pressure for lift,” he explained.
Dad had taken back the wheel and headed us towards home. We were to do a fly-by before landing, as we always did. And since this was my first real flying lesson, I asked Dad why he did this, as I never wondered about it before but was suddenly now aware of the practice.
“You know the phrase “deer in the headlights?”” he asked as we flew low across the grass runway. A mother deer and her 3 fawns looked up but didn’t move. “The deer feel safe to come out onto the field just before dusk and if I land without a fly-by, they might freeze up and I could run into them.”
As Dad pulled the Cessna up and circled around the airport again, I watched the fawns follow their mom across the field into the longer grass on the other side. He had told me long ago to stay quiet on descent so he could concentrate, and I watched his feet on the pedals move back and forth when we landed, balancing the taildragger like a pro, wondering if he ever had butterflies in his stomach before.
* * *
David was landing at the private airport nearest me to pick me up. We hadn’t seen each other in six months, and I was happy he had asked to meet me. Ours had been 5 years of an on-again-off-again relationship that wasn’t going anywhere and I knew that I needed to move on. But it was October, butterfly season, when winged creatures were on the move again.
I had arrived at the airport early and was sitting on the bench by the side of the taxiway. I used to sit there after each time I broke up with David -- just like I used to sit on the side of the grass runway after Dad died – and I would watch the airplanes land and take off. It had been soothing and gut wrenching at the same time.
I was a teenager when my dad died and my mom used to come out to the runway and tell me to stop torturing myself and come on inside. It wasn’t long before Mom sold the hangar and moved us to the city where I couldn’t watch the planes come and go. But to this day, I looked up every time I heard an airplane. I would get excited when it was a taildragger instead of a tricycle gear Cessna, as if Dad sent someone to fly across heaven to wave hello for him.
As I waited for David, I watched the airplanes land on the paved runway, each one that arrived was a confirmation of safe home coming. As butterflies flitted by me like burnt-colored snowfall in 90 degrees, I knew this visit was not a reuniting of lovers. After years of wondering if I’d have a home with David, today the butterfly snowflakes spoke softly like changing autumn leaves. If he had ever planned on marrying me, he would have asked me when he had said he would. Instead, this visit was a pre-arranged commitment to attend a mutual friend’s wedding, like a nail in our own marital coffin.
David’s Cessna came into view and I smiled as I watched him land and taxi back to me. As he got out and tied the plane down, I stayed where I was, thinking about the first time I’d seen him at a fly-in I’d attended. So different now than the jolt I had felt in my stomach back then.
He stood in front of me and said words not mutual between us: “I still feel butterflies every time I see you.”
I smiled sadly, and we embraced like old times. I wondered what butterflies meant to him. He indeed looked at me that day the way he had looked at me nearly every day he came to pick me up over the years. But those previous times of seeing me weren’t after a 6 month absence; usually it had only been a day or a week. Butterflies should ease after nerves settle, shouldn’t they? We only ever used to hug upon greetings, because it used to take the course of the entire day to make him feel settled enough to kiss me.
I knew this would be the last time I saw him. Butterflies don’t return to their summer residence once they fly home, and winter was upon us.
* * *
Our hangar growing up was located on an airfield in a small town in Texas. Every fall, our region was a popular thoroughfare for millions of migrating butterflies on their way from the northeastern states to central Mexico. Next to watching the fireflies sparkle in early summer nights, my favorite magical element of growing up in Texas was playing Disney’s Pocahontas as swarms of butterflies danced around me, “painting with all the colors of the wind.”
I sat in the passenger seat of the Cessna while Dad slowly maneuvered us from the taxiway onto the field. Butterflies fluttered past our airplane like a weathervane, flowing with the direction of the wind. Dad closed the windows, made his routine checks, and called out “clear!” And then the engine began to roar, bringing the idle up to speed, and we started down the airfield, leaving all the butterflies in the dust.
Lifting off the ground, there was a lightness in my chest, like the world just expanded before me and unfettered my whole body. I was not even aware of my butt in the seat, soaring like a butterfly myself, watching the ground below me move farther away rather than me leaving it.
We had only left the runway and were ascending over the riverbanks when I started to smell something burning. I looked at Dad but he didn’t seem to notice so I ignored it. But it wasn’t going away. It didn’t get stronger, just stayed in the cockpit like a fart under a blanket unable to escape. Still Dad acted like normal, watching the clouds ahead, and I stayed silent. But my stomach began to churn. I wasn’t a butterfly anymore; they were flying around in my tummy.
“Do you want to take the wheel again like last week?” Dad asked me once we had reached a level altitude. I hesitated so he said we could fly a little longer before he passed the controls to me.
After another minute of sitting in silence, smelling burnt toast, I spoke up.“Dad, do you smell something burning?”
“Yeah,” he said faintly. Without any sign of concern, he turned the plane back around.
My heart pounded. Why didn’t he seem worried? This wasn’t like riding a bicycle anymore. This had never happened before. Dad didn’t say anything more and I gripped the seat under me. Why didn’t he tell me it was okay or that it wasn’t anything to be concerned about?
We landed like usual and dad taxied to our hangar. He didn’t even help me out like he usually did but went to summon the neighbor.
“I’d say it was a bird building a nest in the engine,” the neighbor said as he followed Dad to the plane. “But that only really happens if you aren’t flying regularly. I can’t imagine they would have started building a nest overnight.”
Forgotten, I sat watching them open the cowling right in front of me.
“I have no idea how they got caught in there!” the neighbor laughed. “These butterflies got fried by your engine. I don’t think there is any danger. We just need to brush these dead bodies off and you’ll be good to go again.”
It only took 20 minutes for Dad to clean up the front of the airplane, close the hood, and get back inside. He looked at me staring at him.
“Nothing to worry about, Bonnie,” he assured me. “The plane just had butterflies in her stomach and she’s feeling fine now.”
* * *
As I entered my teenage years, I became busy with sports at school and going out with friends. In the early fall when school was starting and days were still hot, the prime time for flying was in the morning when it was cooler. I started to decline going with Dad so I could sleep in on weekends.
It was the end of October when I woke up to the pounding on my door and sirens blaring outside. Mom burst through my door, screaming. I thought I’d done something wrong. But as I was gaining consciousness, I heard her say “I’m so glad you stayed home instead of going with your dad. I couldn’t lose you both.”
Dad had not done a fly-by before his landing that morning. The smell of burning butterflies entered my nostrils. I felt them roaring in my stomach. I threw up.
* * *
Every October was a demarcation of sorts. I had long ago stopped hanging around runways anymore. While I once felt a sense of relief every time I witnessed an airplane land, the rush of watching take-offs no longer held the same flavor of excitement it once did. Instead, I spent the season learning about native plants and how to grow them. It was as if the earth was holding me with its gravitational pull, and I did not need to reach for an intangible sky. Plunging a shovel into the soil and clearing rocks and weeds felt solid; planting seeds in the ground that I could water and tend put the control into my hands. From a firm base radiated a liberating stillness in me and I was conscious of my feet on the ground and the footprints I left, bringing me somehow closer to center.
This year, I decided to share that base with Chris, my California-transplant friend that found everything in Texas as miraculous as a child discovering a four leaf clover. During Covid, we became adventurers exploring the countryside together while nothing else was open and most people went into hiding.
“The only time I’ve ever seen anything like this was after a giant brush fire back home,” Chris said. “There were ashes floating around town for days. But this is more like fairy dust.”
He was so enthralled by baby monarchs blowing around that I had invited him to return to the place we’d first met. Bluebonnets had bloomed in the field near my hometown in the spring when he had discovered my backyard. But they were now replaced by milkweed, turks cap, and wild sunflowers in the fall.
We parked the car where he had parked earlier that spring and walked the trail he had traversed when he had stumbled upon me. October was when summer is finally dwindling down and the long summer days start to shorten in the Texas Hill Country, but I wanted to get to my secret spot before dusk.
“They used to release a bunch of butterflies at the annual Butterfly Festival, but they’ve outlawed the commercial market for live butterflies so they stopped the practice. I used to support the event until it became more like a carnival that it felt like a sacrilege to me,” I told Chris.
“So they don’t release butterflies anymore?”
“Not exactly. They still mark them with stickers to track their migration so they do catch butterflies for educational purposes. But the Festival no longer has a big hurrah about the release anymore.”
“That sounds anti-climatic.” We were traipsing across the field of flowers, brushing butterflies off stems of sunflowers, and he stopped to take it in. Overhead and in between bushes, streams of black and orange wings tumbled around soundlessly. “If the Butterfly Festival is supposed to get the public excited about conservation and protection of endangered species, I’d expect they would make a big deal about it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right. But I still don’t like it. The butterflies are special to me and making them such a public spectacle feels like I’m putting them in danger instead of protecting them. In fact, the reason they discouraged people from releasing them at weddings like doves is because they usually arrive dead before the release. And those that survive the transport to the destination usually died shortly after because they were released in a non-native environment or straight into their predator’s lair.”
“That makes sense,” Chris replied. “So how would you balance the need of awareness and their protection?”
“By respecting their homes,” I said. I had taken us off the path to an oasis of trees. Dusk was settling. “You are walking into hollowed ground. My dad and I found this place only a month before he died. They don’t stay here long since they are just passing through Texas on their way home, but I like to think we are lodging them temporarily. If you’ve ever wondered where butterflies go to sleep at night, behold…”
I pulled aside a curtain of vines and held out my arm for him to pass through. As I followed inside, I was overcome with fluttering inside my belly and had to hold back tears. I heard Chris suck in his breath at the same time I did. Speckled light through the canopy of trees illuminated the butterflies like flames on candles. Monarchs were draped in droves on top of each other, clustered on branches and hanging from vines.
“They say that love feels like butterflies on the inside,” Chris said. I tore my eyes from the mesmerizing flickering flames of wings and looked at him looking at me. “But they didn’t say that butterflies look like love on the outside.”
* * *
Chris handed me a cup of sweet tea as he sat down on the porch swing next to me. He put his arm around me, leaned over to kiss me, but I felt the light tickle of his lashes on my cheek. I laughed.
“What’s so funny,” Topher chirped, looking up from the match cars he was racing at my feet. I knew I was going to need to patch his overalls tomorrow, always wearing out the knees from crawling on the ground, digging tunnels and building ramps and hills out of rocks for obstacle courses.
“Oh, your dad just likes tease to me,” I said.
I sat there, sipping my tea and watching the stars poke through the darkening sky. Chris slapped at mosquitoes while moths swarmed the porch light.
“We need to buy some citronella candles to keep these insects away,” Chris said.
“Daddy!” Topher exclaimed. “Why would you want to keep Mama’s friends away? I thought we were trying to get them to stay!”
I smiled. “Sweetie, your dad wants to shoo away the moths and mosquitoes, not the butterflies. Besides, we aren’t really trying to get them to stay forever.”
“Why not? Butterflies are your favorite.”
"Butterflies aren’t meant to be kept. They show us how to get back home.”
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