"If one by one we counted people out
For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long
To get so we had no one left to live with.
For to be social is to be forgiving."
--Robert Frost

This week, when did I feel close to God? When did I feel far away?
Lately, many of my students have asked why I like butterflies. Whenever I tell this story, I feel close to my Creator--and I was flattered in first hour when Alisha said, "Miss Brown, you're a really good storyteller!" But I think she just wanted me to keep telling stories, instead of teaching class!
When I was in high school, my part-time job was helping out with my church's after-school daycare. My friends Stephanie and Baker were there as well, so to us it felt more like just hanging out, and not like a job-job. We still share stories about all of the kids there, how most of them are now in high school...time does rush by. Of course, for every adorable kid, there is one that is, well, "challenging." And Lacey was one of those kids.
Tomboyish, tough, and mean, Lacey always "had her card turned," which was our discipline system. Change your card to blue, sit out for five minutes...all the way to purple, which meant their parents were called in for a conference.
Lacey's card stayed purple. She bit, kicked, and cussed her way through that school year. So my friends and I figured she would get the Day Care Boot anytime--at least before summer.
We were wrong.
That summer, after school daycare became Day Camp. We took the kids to Roper Mountain Science Center, to the free movies, to the park...and to Riverbanks Zoo. The day of the zoo trip, I found I had left all of my spending money in my car (a 1961 Superbeetle, cherry red, named Eleanor), and that within my group of sugar-coated children was...yes, Lacey.
The kids were crazy, the heat and humidity of Columbia in July will make anyone bonkers, and these kids were no exception. Even a monkey-shaped bottle of water cost $8, and Lacey pours her sno cone down my shirt. At the birdhouse, she spits on a bird (I'm sure it died. There's no way it could have lived through that amount of spittle). By that time, we have over an hour to kill, and we've lapped the park twice (no, at that speed you see nothing, and yes, all of the animals scamper away in fear).
The big zoo promotion that year was The Butterfly Garden. With banners showing a large, colorful picture of a young girl watching a huge butterfly land on her hand, my kids were buying the gimmick. So we crossed the Saluda River and hiked up to the Botanical Gardens.
The Butterfly exhibit was a garden planted along a curving pathway with a gauzy, muslin tent pitched over it. Then butterflies, caterpillars, cocoons, and chrysalis are carefully added. This means you pay an extra $2 (yes, I had to borrow money from an eight-year-old), and walk through a garden with butterflies flying all around. A fluttering, dream-like world.
Of course, the kids loved it. Too much. They ran around (waaay off the path), hands out, trying to get butterflies to land on them. Just like in the pictures on the banners. The boys picked caterpillars off leaves and twigs and dared each other to eat them. I could not get the kids out of that tent fast enough.
At the end of the path and the tent was the obligatory gift shop, so I hustled them into the shockingly air-conditioned shed. And I asked for a count. At the beginning of the day, I assigned each child a number from one to ten. When I called for a count, they'd yell out their number:
"one!"
"two!"
"three!"
"four !"...and so on...5,6,7,9,10.
Where was eight?
Wait, Lacey was eight. No no no. No.
I told the other children to buy anything they wanted, just not to leave the giftshop, and I stepped back into the butterfly house to look for Lacey. I honestly thought the entire tent would be flattened, but I walked quickly down the curving path--with. no. Lacey. anywhere.
Finally, there she was. Crouched in the corner of the tent, way off the path, there she was.
And she was quiet.
And she was still.
Folding and unfolding on her hand was a large, iridescent blue butterfly.
Just like on the banners.
I asked (in awe), "Lacey, how did you get that butterfly to land on your hand? That's what all of the other kids wanted to happen..."
And she said (in a calm voice, an Other sort of voice) "Miss Beth (that's what all of the day care kids called me), you just have to sit still and wait, and pretty things will come."

I remember that every time I see a butterfly.