Caterpillars are becoming butterflies. Five little cocoons hang from the side of a mesh cage in Heath’s bedroom, and we are counting the days until they emerge.
Arriving in the mail in a small plastic cup loaded with enough food to sustain this transformation, the five larvae grew rapidly over the past week before attaching themselves to the lid, assuming the much-anticipated J shape, and, in a matter of hours, encasing themselves in a dense brown shell of their own making. Having moved them to the larger butterfly cage, we wait.
Patience is not a word that leaps to mind when I think of my son. But his imagination, so tightly coiled around all things celestial for the past year, has begun to expand, and as the school year ends and he moves beyond a teacher who never appreciated all that makes him special, he has begun to relax. With the addition of a new pair of glasses and a daily squirt of Nasonex, the world is regaining its clarity and my little boy is finding the sweetness and vulnerability he has buried beneath anger for much of the year.
And his sister senses this.
Hallie Jake. We loved the idea of a little girl with such a rakish name, redolent of wise-cracking 1930’s aviatrixes, Amelia Earhart & Kate Hepburn rolled into one. The kind of woman who could hold her whiskey, throw a good punch, and stand toe to toe with any man. A woman who was smart, independent and, above all, strong. Which I have no doubt Hallie will be. For she is fast becoming a spunky, resilient little girl whose buoyant spirit has become a mainstay in all our lives.
My own feelings for her are, at times, so fierce as to be bewildering.
I had heard somewhere that in times past Downs children, considered imbeciles, were often abandoned to orphanages where their heads were shaved and they languished under the minimal care such institutions offered. What haunted me about this story was the lack of love, horrible for any child, but somehow more so for a child who has a greater struggle to understand. They must have felt unloveable, as if they deserved their loneliness.
So in those first confusing hours, when I had no idea what else to do, I vowed that Hallie would feel loved. And to this day, when I hold her close as she’s falling asleep, I whisper in her ear, so she’ll never forget, “You are much loved, Hallie Jake. You are much loved.” This simple invocation, and the feelings it inspires, has lead to places in my soul I never knew existed. It’s as if, after living my entire life in a small apartment, I’ve opened a door to discover a palace.
And now, days away from her second birthday, the love she’s received has begun to blossom. I can see it in her eyes, especially when she looks at Heath: her hero, her brother, and her best friend.
As we move into the early heat of summer, Heath is keeping an eye on his five little charges, waiting for them to begin their gentle struggle toward a new life. He’s not going to want to let them go. I can see it coming. And although I remind him daily that all creatures long to be free and that if he keeps them too long, they will die, I know he doesn’t believes me.
But, we’ll see how it goes. That’s a battle for another day.
In the meantime we await the beating of newfound wings.
Playing in the City with Trains 
Leave a Reply