The Butterfly and the Babushka

Terence Stone

Between a single birthday and the death to which it acts as guarantor, there is usually lots of room for experience. My life is long enough that it holds like the visible babushka doll many fully nested experiences—those memories or dreams that the body holds as if they were designed to fit and be carried forever for some purpose. And I’ve often wondered about those thing—their purpose. Now I believe it’s some common wisdom that’s meant to be shared. You know—a bit like the old village storyteller who was burned at the stake or dismissed so that people could create myths for nothing but profit.

I think most of the old story tellers were women—wise and bold. They probably all had eyes as clear as diamonds and soft as mist--grandmothers. That’s what babushka means, you know. I think I’m a bit of a grandmother; so let’s not allow gender to get in the way here—this is storytelling.

It’s a curious thing. If I let go of what others might expect me to say or remember, I can easily feel the things that naturally nest in me. Even as I write, I remember two or three summers ago sitting on a bus by myself looking through the window on a sunny day as we passed a beautiful garden with an expanse of lawn. A magnolia close to the house was flowering with those distinctive, large pale-pink cloudy blooms that could as easily float up as fall down. A girl sat on a branch in a pink, flouncy dress the colour of a magnolia blossom. The magnolia dropped two blooms and she followed. It was moon-gravity under that tree because--I swear--all three fell in elegant slow motion. I remember letting out a little gasp, unsure that she would hit the ground and hurt herself, or be lifted and carried off by a sudden breeze. I saw her laugh as she tumbled amongst a  profusion of other fallen magnolia blossoms and then I relaxed. Just one of those experiences that nest in me. Perhaps it’s waking experiences that have a dream quality to them that are most easily held in this way.





If you’re reading this, then you’ve had the experience I speak of when you see a baby or a child you think you’d just love to hold; even a complete stranger to you. It happened to me once with a little girl I knew. One day I just had that urge to hold her in my arms as her mom cradled her. Unfortunately, I felt a little ill—sniffles or scratchy throat. You know what I mean. You just say to yourself, “Not this time; I’ll see her again”.

Well, the next time I saw her was in a dream. I didn’t know who it was at first. It was just a bundled blanket off the edge of an outside skating rink where children and adults glided happily around the ice on a bright winter’s day. I was curious about the bundle and as I drew closer I could see an infants face. There was something ominous that filled me like a warning babushka just inside my skin. As I leaned over her, I could see the tiniest smear of blood at the edge of one nostril. A kindly woman, her caregiver—not her mother—appeared, smiling a greeting. I told her something was wrong with the child.

“No”, she said. “She’s just fine”.

Unheeding her assurances, without hesitation I swept her up in my arms and headed off along a snow path that traversed the lower part of the hill on which the rink was cut.

All I could think was that I needed to get her to a hospital. The snow was pure and fluffy all around me, reflecting a crystal light. As the path led me to the lower corner of a house in front of which I would pass, I looked uphill to my left and saw five pieces of snow break softly from the smooth snow of the hillside. Each gently tumbled and gathered more snow as they tumbled to intercept my path. Four of them stopped short, but one continued and came to a stop on the path right in front of me. I still held the child safely and gently in my arms, but could go no further until I had picked up the fluffy snowball in both hands.

No sooner had I lifted it than it began to move from inside. Snow broke away as if it were soft shell from a hatching egg. First there was a flash of scarlet, then blue, followed by yellow. The brilliance of rich, primary colours emerged from the purest white of the snow and took the form of a huge butterfly unfolding its wings from a cocoon. In a state of wonder I held still my hands as the butterfly faced me. I brought it toward my face. The butterfly extended its proboscis and made contact with my lower lip—hard, unlike the softness of the dream. It wanted me to know that I had been kissed; and then it flew off in a riot of colour. I looked down in my arms to see that the child had disappeared.

I awoke suddenly and bit my lower lip where the butterfly had kissed me. My lip still held the feeling and I knew on awakening that I had been holding that same child I had chosen not to hold because of my sniffles.

Well, I moved away and never did get the opportunity to hold that little girl. About one and a half years later I was following up on some old contacts and discovered that the little girl had died six months earlier. There’s something about the babushka in me that held that child in my dream and witnessed something profoundly magical. She flew off, transformed and left me with a kiss. Grandmother that I am, I’ll always carry a part of some essence of her nested inside of me.