My daughter loves creatures of all sorts, and has very little fear of them.
This summer, since moving to the country, we’ve had a steady stream of creatures (mostly of the six-legged variety) traipsing through our house in a variety of Mason jars and cardboard boxes. Nadia has an inquiring mind and a motherly attitude toward most creatures, so she spends concentrated effort on creating “homes” for everything that crosses her path – filled with soft grass, dirt to dig in, twigs to climb on, water to drink, leaves to eat. All the comforts of home.
A running list of occupants would include pill bugs, earthworms, beetles, caterpillars, butterflies, moths, beetles, stink bugs, grasshoppers, lightning bugs, and numerous toads and frogs. When we found a baker’s dozen of garden spiders in the back field she begged to catch one and keep it (we avoided that one – their bite can be pretty uncomfortable…) She is desperately hoping to catch a mouse right now with the aid of a trap she and Papa rigged up – a two-by-four ramp up to a deep bucket, smeared with peanut butter. She also regularly visits the back field on safari, searching for snakes and, really, anything that moves.
But the highlight of this summer has been caterpillars.
The facts of nature
We had the distinct honor of playing host to at least twenty different caterpillars over the last three months. Several died off, most were released, and some were disposed of. The tent caterpillars, we quickly discovered, were dastardly, and for the sake of Nana and Papa’s foliage Nadia has now become a tent caterpillar crusher. “Oh, that’s a bad one!” she’ll state in a matter-of-fact tone, and then matter-of-factly smush it under her shoe, wipe it off on the grass, and go on playing. So much for loving all living things. But let’s be honest, this one may be more of an effect of the fall than the pollinating varieties.
Nadia, generally, takes these facts of nature in stride. If an insect is destroying something good, it only makes sense to make sure it is destroyed. It’s fascinating to watch those garden spiders wrap up pests and remember that each eight-legged wonder is doing its part to balance the ecosystem, all from the center of an architectural structure that still confounds scientists. Admittedly, “Charlotte’s Web” also endeared her to spiders.
But there are more beautiful examples of God’s work in the world, and we had two very special caterpillars who made it to chrysalis stage – a black swallowtail and a monarch.
Nadia fed each of them studiously, every day, watching carefully for the moment they hooked themselves to the twig she provided or arranged themselves in the appropriate J-shape. We missed the chrysalis process for both of them. Each morning Nadia came careening into the room, eyes shining. “The caterpillar made a chrysalis!” and we would go and look at it, admiring the tiny skin it left on the floor of the butterfly cage.
We also missed the emergence of the swallowtail. It skipped church, and when we got home it was already fluttering about in the cage.
The monarch, however, was a late arrival, and we were determined to keep a close eye on it, marking the color of the chrysalis as the days passed. One evening it turned transparent, and we knew the time was coming.
transformation in real time
The following morning I was perched in my writer’s tower, tapping away at some project or another, when I heard my wife shrieking from downstairs that it was coming out. I ran downstairs (the emerging process is literally less than a minute) to find my entire family huddled around the cage, watching in awe as a wrinkled, chubby butterfly pushed it’s bulk out of the tiny capsule. It’s abdomen was enormous, full of fluids destined for new wings, and after it escaped from the case it clung to the outside and slowly pumped those fluids into its wings, quadrupling them in size.
I had never seen this. I caught insects all of my life, pinned them in boxes, knew dozens of facts about them. But I’d never seen the actual emergence from the chrysalis, and I really didn’t expect to be so surprised by it.
After all the waiting and anticipation, I was stunned by how weird and ungainly a newly emerged butterfly was, the proportions all off, these kind of remnants of caterpillar-ness lingering in its body. I was stunned by how quickly it slid out, with perfectly formed and sized strong legs to cling to the case while the rest of its body caught up with it. I was stunned by how it swung itself back and forth to get the fluids flowing into its wings, how it knew exactly what its body needed. And finally, when the wings were done, I was stunned at how that chubby little caterpillar had turned into this gorgeous monarch. I knew in my head that this happened. But I had just seen it in real time.
Here are some more stunning things about monarchs: they are the only insect that makes a two-way migration. They store up on nectar and then travel over 3000 miles south and west to California and Mexico to escape the cold winters of the north. They travel to the same trees that their parents did. Even though they will not make it all the way back to our garden by next year, their great-grandbutterflies will.
I’m not sure how often I think about growth in terms of cycles of transformation, but evidence abounds that that is how God works in our world and in our lives.
cycles of growth
This caterpillar spent all summer eating – nourishing its body on milkweed. And when it was ready, it instinctively followed the exact same process every monarch caterpillar does, shedding its skin to create a case. And in that case, hidden from view, its entire physical form changed. Then, when it was done, it came out – vestiges of its clumsy stage with it – and pumped its wings full of life until it was ready to fly. To escape the coming winter, it will fly to a warmer climate, then return home to lay more eggs… and the cycle begins again with the next generation.
I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to see these sorts of stages in my own life, but sometimes I catch a glimpse of them in my children. I notice, for instance, that Percy is losing some of his baby chub and getting taller. His face is thinner. He talks more coherently and with more expression. Malakai surprises us daily with new thoughts about the world. The other day he said that he was looking forward to dying, because then he can fly and eat food all the time, and never go to bed because there’s no night in heaven. Not a bad perspective, when you come down to it – even though it’s limited. But the point is that his perspective is growing, like him. Louisa cuts a baby tooth and tongues it. Nadia cuts a grown-up tooth and plots about what she’ll do with the loot from the tooth fairy. And by comparison and reflection and looking closely, we see this growth.
How this growth happens is often a mystery. We can only nurture them as best we can with the nourishment we’ve been given – memorizing the Word, praying the prayers, showing them beautiful things, drying the tears, giving liberal amounts of hugs and kisses, putting food on the table, giving them medicine when they’re sick, removing destructive things from their lives, making sure they sleep… it’s never a single piece. It’s an ecosystem. Sometimes we’re the milkweed, sometimes we’re the twig, sometimes we’re the spider. Sometimes we’re the little girl who feeds it.
in light of who we were
We only notice these subtle cycles when we look closely at where they were and where they are. But the change is happening, every moment of every hour of every day of every week, month, year, decade… and then suddenly you’re an adult and going off to college and getting married and having kids of your own and you live for ten years in Chicago and then move to Indiana and when you visit your friends back in Chicago for a weekend it all comes flooding back and you see just how much you’ve all grown and changed… but only in retrospect, and only in light of who you were.
Does a caterpillar know what stage of transformation it’s in? Does it realize that it’s turning into something new? Or is it just thinking caterpillar thoughts like,
“Wow, I just destroyed that leaf. Welp, on to the next one.”
“Okay, time to hang upside down for a little bit, spin a little something. Boy, I’m tired.”
“Oh man, gotta stretch these things on my back… wait a minute. Where did those come from?”
I like to think, when I’m feeling purely unscientific, that it’s a little bit of a surprise for the caterpillar when it takes off for the first time.
nurturing the unfolding
The past is instructive, the present is hard to pin down, and the future is uncertain. But by God’s grace, there is still growth to be had, by increments and in cycles and through metamorphosis.
Nadia, of course, had the privilege of carefully assisting the new monarch out of its netted cage. It crawled onto her cupped hand and she drew it out of the cage. It fluttered away, rising to the height of the ornamental pear tree in our front yard, landing on a leaf and slowly opening and closing its new wings. It soaked in the sun for a long while, and we didn’t see where it flew off to. But next year we’ll see new ones, which will lay new eggs on some milkweed leaf in the back, and maybe my newly minted 7-year-old daughter, gap-toothed and coltish, will locate the leaf and nurture the caterpillar and watch the next generation unfold.
Watching and guarding and nurturing that unfolding, right now, is the gift that Linnea and I have been given, like our parents before us and back for generations. May we learn what we can from the moments, knowing that transformation is happening – in hearts and minds and bodies, in mysterious and holy ways.