On Monarchs and Milkweed

My mother turned into a butterfly and flew away and broke my heart.

Yesterday afternoon, I took the boys to their school open house to meet with their teachers and get a chance to see their classrooms. I was glad for the chance. Their school does a get-together in a park the Sunday before school starts, Popsicles in the Park, which I had to miss because I was in Decatur, trying to salvage something from the shards of my mother’s life strewn around her half-empty house.

It had been an emotionally taxing weekend, and I welcomed the normalcy of the school open house. I usually avoid social school engagements. I’m shy and awkward around people. I find small talk difficult, and I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing, what I should be doing, what are they doing, what’s going on, on and on, and it builds into this general anxiety. But there was something refreshingly grounding about parking at the school and walking in with the boys, stopping to chat with a friend and her kids. And a school the day before school feels resolutely focused on the future, washing the taste of the past from my mouth.

There was an empty glass tank in my youngest’s classroom, and he excitedly asked his teacher if it was for a new pet. She replied that she was hoping to find a Monarch caterpillar to keep in there, but hadn’t had any luck yet. She was hoping that some of their parents could help out.

Monarchs exclusively lay their eggs on Milkweed plants, and I thought that we had some in our overgrown yard. I went all through the yard this afternoon, though, and I couldn’t find any. Tomorrow I’m planning to go to the prairie restoration near the library and see if I can find it.