Birds and Butterflies...

This morning in the pool, a yellow butterfly came and landed on a bush near the water. I smiled. His wings were the happy color of a child’s crayon and he was very familiar to me. Last summer when I was having a difficult time with my dad’s death, these same yellow butterflies surrounded me wherever I went. Thousands of yellow butterflies. Driving in the car, they’d follow alongside. They’d greet me whenever I went outside. I felt protected, as though little angels were hovering near me.

Around that same time, someone sent me a code I could put into the url of my web page. My web page features a drawing of a girl stitching (me?) My web page also features butterfly graphics you can click on to get to another page. When adding the code to the page, the butterflies flew around the stitching girl. It almost made me want to cry. Was Dad saying hello? Saying I’d be fine?

So this morning in the pool, when I saw the familiar yellow butterfly, I said “hi”. And he circled around the fence and came back and sat on the bush. I said “hi” again. He circled and came back to land on the bush. Again I said “hi” and off he went over the fence and a different, smaller butterfly took his place, looked at me and flew away.

Ten minutes later a dove came and sat on a rock by the pool. I said, “I saw the butterflies, thank you”. Then another dove came to sit on the fence and the first dove started inching his way towards the second smaller dove. Mom? Dad? Strangely, I didn’t feel silly telling the second dove to take the other dove’s wing and fly away. I told her it would be OK, just take his wing… I looked away because the yellow butterfly came into view again. When I looked back, the doves were gone. I smiled at the yellow butterfly and said “thank you” and went inside.