Butterfly Chronicles Volume 32: My Baking Bonafide Butterfly Beholder

In Him we live and move and have our being.

 

Madison is like a pair of binoculars, ever spotting the highly unspottable, the almost missed, the hidden treasure, the whisper of butterfly wings always.  Life marches.  She will turn 12 in a few days.  I wonder how her memories of 11 will be affected by Zach.  She is strong.  Witty.  An old soul in a young body.  She gets life.  And she's one of those special people who gets jokes way above where her young mind should be perched and she laughs and that makes us laugh and Taylor and Zachery were always shaking their heads saying, "What's so funny?"  And Madison always knew.

The other day, I poured over into a blog all my tears and words and pain and then unexpectedly, accidentally deleted it.  I was overly bothered about the deletion until Madison said, "Well, I guess God didn't want you to publish that one."  Hmmm.  So wise.  So sure.  So clever.  So deep.  She just gets it.  And she's so right about that blog.  I was trying to explain how life is different and how I understand how people just want to move away and be somewhere where no one knows about the death and it was really too much.

That day, the day the blog was erased, I had eaten lunch with two of my tribe members.  (Yes, I belong to a tribe of tribal screaming, praying, laughing, aching, loving women.)  As always, I try really hard to ask them about their boys -  Zach's friends.  And they tell me and mostly it is okay.  But that day, we talked and laughed and talked and they told stories about the marathon XBOX multi screen multi player multi XBOX boxes and 8 hours of only take a break to eat or pee kind of 8 hour marathon of XBOXING.  And all of a sudden it was too much son talk and Zach wasn't there for that play day and I just almost swallowed my own throat trying to hold down the tears.  And that's why I know how it feels to want to leave it all behind and start over, new, somewhere where no one knows.  But life marches and I don't want to march away from those who love us best.

Sometimes I feel bad about my blog because there's not a whole lot of sunshine in it.  But that's what I use it for.  To pour all the clouds and wintery cold winds and blustery gray days of deep sad onto those pages to GET THEM OUT of me!  And it helps and I can see the sunshine again - at least for a while and sometimes for longer than just a while.

And that's where baking and butterflies come in.  This morning, Madison spotted a sparkly spangled monarch and took pictures for me because she's just that way.  Kind, sweet, always thinking of me and the butterflies and what they mean to me.  It's really the only acknowledgement of Zach that she ever makes - those butterflies.  She points out those butterflies but won't mention Zach's name - almost no mention at all for 6 long months.  And I wonder what is going on in that amazing brain she belongs to.  What in the world is she thinking about it all or is she even thinking about it at all or does she ever wish she was somewhere else too?  Whatever she's thinking, she doesn't say much about it and less when we ask.

So today, we baked.  The first baking symphony choreographed on our new kitchen stage.  And we danced and we lunged, plunged cookies in and dipped to drag them back out of ovens.  And it is a quietly sad happy kind of day where the sad is behind the happy instead of in front.  And I like it that way.  Sad second and happy first.

And it is Madison's fault, gift, doing, giving of this happy being first in front of sad day.  And the tiny not gluten free bite bit out of that cookie I took was YUMILICIOUS. And the after cooking symphony continues - the sisters giggle and happy talk pirouettes on toe tips drifting to find me at this desk, and they, ever laughing, eat cookies in the kitchen. 

Life marches no matter what. Thank you God for a day where happy is first in front of sad and giggles leap.  Only in You do I really LIVE no matter where sad or happy land.  In You I live and move and have my being.