Float Like a Butterfly, Time-Trip like TOS

Second of Two in a Series related to funerals, weddings, and broken legs

Yeah, so now I remember what I forgot last time: it was the butterflies.

A whole bunch of tropical butterflies, in fact, doing all the things tropical butterflies do after dark in the steamy mist of their home space—in this case, Magic Wings, by name, at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC, near Duke University where my (now) daughter-in-law teaches.

(Wicked smart is she, with an MA from TCU and a PhD from Clemson. She’s already a rock star in her field: the rhetorics of health and medicine. Her (now) husband is no slouch himself: a late-blooming IT “unicorn,” who, as he puts it, “messed around and got important” in his company).

If they, for many and too numerous to name reasons, are not your average couple, Magic Wings is not your typical terrarium. While its anterooms, unremarkably, feature weird bugs like Giant South American Cockroaches, as well as scorpions and spiders, the habitat itself is big and terraced enough for small wedding parties to cluster into corners of its gracious maze.

And so it was on that on a recent Saturday night, about twenty-five sweaty young humans—and three more who were not-so-young—gathered precisely there in anticipation of long-anticipated and deeply celebrated nuptials.

My son-in-law Eric had created, dismantled and then reassembled inside Magic Wings a wood and metal archway that reminded me, at least—who was doubtless the oldest geek in attendance—of the “Guardian of Forever,” a sentient time-portal which appears in “The City on the Edge of Forever,” the episode that Trekkists generally consider the best of all titles in Star Trek: The Original Series.

I doubt anyone else “saw it.” Nor do I imagine anyone else would have had time to digest the reference had I pointed it out.

No matter. As in the ST:TOS episode the Guardian granted access to the past, the future and the present, the archway served as backdrop for the couple’s self-composed vows—which made time itself in all its aspects as thick as the steam and as variable as butterfly flight.

And for a half-hour or so, our entire “crew” was embarked on an amazing time-trek: the archway giving me, at least, visualized access to the storied past, to a host of possible futures, and to the moment itself in its distilled essence.

I do not know who else was already anticipating the Liquid Nitrogen Margaritas that the Museum provided as part of its service; what I do know is that all the pretty dresses and suits (including mine) were pretty much wilted and damp even before the couple delivered themselves of their self-written vows. Looked like thirst to me!

Cool as it was, this was Plan B, at the very least. It may have been Plan L. Magic Wings was not even a twinkle in a butterfly’s compound eye until, just a few weeks prior to the wedding, Plan A found itself “Gone with Helene,” as it were.

Long-planned and expensively secured, Plan A comprised a big Air BNB in Asheville, on a beautiful bank of the French Broad River. Food, flowers, gifts and such were likewise retained and dearly deposited, if you please, till in a moment, all the planned-on places and things were deposited, I mean—just flushed away—by the merciless storm.

But, “Never postpone anything on account of the weather,” Frederick Buechner’s grandfather used to say, and in that same spirit, new plans and places were hastily fashioned: a new itinerary and schedule were locked-in. The happy couple called a “do-over,” except for the timing of it.

Flights were rerouted; Google Maps were reprogrammed. And then, on the Friday before we occupied Magic Wings on Saturday, folk from Texas, South Carolina and North Carolina found themselves in their temporary base camp—the new Air BNB where, on the morning of, the ladies got their hair, nails and make-up done.

The guys, meanwhile, relocated to my son and soon-to-be daughter-in-law’s house. From thence we ventured forth to Tobacco Road for brunch and OSU vs IU football; came back to the house for Ole Miss and Florida. Before the end of the Tennessee vs UTEP scrimmage, the guys milled about and began to dress and soon were making their pilgrim way to the over-sized terrarium.

(Cue: “Just get me to the church on time!”)

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A couple of weeks before the Day, my son called and said basically this: “Dad, we would love for you to speak at the ceremony—something about love and marriage, maybe as it relates to the life-cycle of butterflies. And remember, we are trying to get this done in thirty, so… you can have two minutes.”

I was already on board for signing the license, so I was tickled to have an addendum. Luckily, I had finished it before I broke my leg (see my substack from November 26):

What follows is what I hobbled to the archway and delivered, after Jacob helped me get my balance. And yes, more than two minutes precisely, but once I got started, what was anyone going to do stop me?

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Do you remember the Geico commercial—the one where the sloth and some folks are playing “Pictionary”?

The sloth draws part of one line; the people are guessing: “stick,” “small sword.” When the time is up, the guy says, “The answer was tandem bicycle.”

I can relate, inasmuch as what I’m to do here tonight, for the next couple of minutes, is to draw some little lines, in hopes of describing, as it were, a “tandem bicycle”: love and marriage.

To offer some clues about how love and marriage, together, might relate to... butterflies. Or vice versa.

And some of that is quite obvious, to all of us.

How the life-cycle of a butterfly is entirely predictable, and every bit that mysterious. Well-documented, and at the same time, astonishing. Both routine and miraculous, every time—like the coming of a new baby to the Taylor family.

The “futurities,” as Hannah would call them, of a given butterfly—its possibilities and potentialities—are all present from the very start, in the tiniest of eggs, and no way, at the jump to know all the specifics even within a given species: so much variation, coloration, configuration.

But how easily we walk right past butterfly eggs—even here, tonight—and never pause to ponder the actual or the potential, the present and coming beauty they already hold deep within them.

Segue: I wonder how many people walked right past Jacob and Hannah at “Velo Fellow” on their first date, as they ate fried green tomatoes and shared their disdain for both the New England Patriots and Nick Saban? Which would have shown me everything I needed to see—but most of the others there that night did not have the imagination to envision what they would become.

What they would become in time, at least, and time is key for both love and butterflies—along with the great changes that time alone reveals.

Segue: Butterfly eggs become caterpillars, of course, striped and fuzzy, walking around crookedly on legs and feet… not the prettiest of the butterflies’ stages, but necessary, as it is the beginnings of transformation, of growth and development.

Segue: So too, most of us can remember wobbly, fuzzy times in our own developing, promising relationships—which are the dangerous times, as well: so many things can go wrong. Lots of caterpillars get squashed, or eaten. As for love?

Segue: There are promising relationships that do not survive those initial, awkward and necessary changes—and even those that do (if they are lucky), they will still have to pupate: to go through the hard and necessary withdrawals and wallings-off where change and growth continue, but unseen, and hidden… until the moment when what emerges again proves wondrous. Or can.

Get the allegory? Of course you do. Even a sloth can draw little lines.

But here’s the thing: in love and especially marriage, unlike in butterflies the process is not a one-off: the life-cycle, egg, awkward caterpillar, cocoon, beautiful emergence—it occurs over and over again.

And more to the point, in a given relationship, if it is healthy, there may well be one or even multiple aspects of that relationship at a different life-stage than other aspects of the very same relationship—at the very same time.

The key to celebrating rather than resenting those predictable, well-documented seasons of development, is the recognition that every aspect, every stage offers a chance for maturation and growth. For new futurities.

If couples have the eyes to see it.

So segue: one more thing: butterfly eyes (which would be a great name for a gal band): like all insects, butterflies have compound eyes, made up of ommatidia: tens of thousands of discreet lenses that simultaneously receive and deliver a host of images to the insect’s brain, only… undifferentiated.

Because there is no pupil in a compound eye, there is no way for all that data to be filtered and focused. The poor bug hovers, flies in circles, bumps into things…

Segue: in marriages, too, so much data pours in, day-by-day. And it can be hard to get any of it into focus, much less keep it there. Which is why we need partners: to help us find and keep focus amidst the stuff.

Part of the emerging beauty of Jacob and Hannah, is that they do help each other to see more clearly. Haven’t we observed that in them, clearly, these last few years?

Just as, tonight, in the same way, we are already pondering the beauty and futurities of their emerging love and marriage.

(And don’t they look sweet, taking their seat, on a bicycle built just for the two of them?)

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A last word: Jacob and Hannah “registered” for their wedding this: advice on how to make a marriage last. I am not one to offer such counsel… unless I am. I did not say this that night, but would say it now:

The key, the key, the key is, I think, this: When you look across the breakfast table, see what you have and not what you don’t.

Many marriages fail because one, or the other, or both persons look at their spouse and see only what that person is not. Which leads to all sorts of mischief.

Instead, see and value and celebrate and be thankful for what your spouse is. That not only saves you from all sorts of trouble, it makes the days and the nights predictably miraculous.

Like the appearance of a butterfly.