We’re all just winging it
Shortly after the level 4 lockdown began, my daughter, Hollie, found a monarch butterfly and named her Monica.
One of Monica’s wings was perfectly regal, resplendent in ochre shades etched within obsidian lines. But the other wing had been ripped messily in half, like a badly opened envelope.
Surprisingly, the flightless butterfly joined our bubble.
Quiescent on a bedside table, Monica rested each night, eyes open, on retired fairy house furniture.
Other families made sourdough and improved their homes during lockdown. Our family ate baked beans. We squabbled over board games and the right way to say ‘‘yoghurt’’. The lawnmower broke. So did the toaster. Five light bulbs spontaneously became ‘‘bulbs’’.
I kept buying bayonet ones by mistake. Eventually I announced we would live romantically and lit a scented candle boasting the fragrance ‘‘volcanic coconut’’.
On Netflix, a woman cooked a gourmet meal using two ovens while her two children sat stiffly in a white room neatly sorting Lego by colour. Outside, on our unmowed lawn, three children wrestled over whose turn it was on the PS4. Peace reigned only when I suggested I could appear at any moment in the background of their school Zoom calls in my bunny pyjamas.
Monica was a welcome distraction. Each morning, she ate breakfast with us at the table, perched on a leaf beside Hollie’s place at the table. The butterfly enjoyed dining on a slice of strawberry or banana. I complained about having another mouth to feed but secretly enjoyed it.
Each morning Hollie took Monica outside on her finger.
The broken butterfly then spent the day outside hanging out on the trampoline in the sun or leaping around the lawn haphazardly.
Monica was broken but still living her best life. As a single mum I often feel like I am ‘‘winging it’’. Watching Monica jumping through long grass while her peers soared in clouds above her made me realise everyone is winging it to some degree. It’s OK to be a bit broken.
As night arrived, Monica waited in the same spot in the garden for Hollie, jumping onto her finger to be carried inside, like the royal guest she had become.
On the evening of April 28, the first day of level 3, Monica was not waiting in her usual spot. I worried they’d be upset but I underestimated my awesome children. They would miss her, of course, but it wasn’t about them, they were happy for Monica. She had known, they said, that level 4 was over. It was time for her to go home.
The lifespan of a monarch butterfly is two to six weeks.