My beloved daughter, Podying:
In 1983 that segment of C-5 between Tandang Sora and Road 20
in the vicinity of Bahay Toro was a howl of grass and carabao wallows.
Back then, we appropriated that stretch of space on weekend
mornings for such silly joys as angling for edible frogs (your mom had no
inkling of such culinary yummies as frog legs fricassee or batuteng palaka so we had to free ‘em frogs right in our wee yard,
hopping frogs were promptly pounced on and gobbled up by our pet cat), getting
bareback rides on grazing cows, mushroom hunts and gadabout interface with the
area’s humblest denizens.
Say, I took a snapshot of you and your kuya Bilog wading among clumps of kalug-kalog bushes, intently tearing up stems and flowers, probably
wondering whether kalug-kalog is an
estranged kin or a remote relative of soya bean.
You caught butterflies, scaly wings still wet as they eased
out of cocoons latched on stems of balatong
aso (dog bean) or kantutay
(lantana) that teemed in those grounds. Too, the place teemed with butterflies.
Where did those swirls of throbbing color come from? You wondered then. Those flying
beauties were extant worm-like larvae. There must have been thousands of
butterfly larvae feasting among dog bean or lantana leaves plus an assortment of
wild greens whose names fled me then. Now I have the names down pat.
It’ll be sheer joy replicating that stretch of butterfly
haven—slathered now with concrete and toxic fumes—even on a smaller scale
elsewhere. Between you and me, I’d say I like to rummage through those serene
times, pay homage to that past, and maybe rebuild that lost memory of your
toddling years. Lovely, eh? So I’m gathering seeds of those weeds, wildling
greens and runaway herbs that butterfly larvae fed on. The seeds will be sown
at the onset of monsoon season.
Hah, build it—a butterfly sanctuary—and they will come.
Now, here’s a childishly silly reason for building a
butterfly sanctuary. Call it a flighty excuse, something that smacks of wishful
thinking.
A Native American legend has it that if you have a dearest
wish, catch a butterfly and whisper such a wish to it. Butterflies heed Coughlin’s
Law-- speak not unless you can improve the silence- so your secret wish is ever
safe in their keeping. Set the butterfly free. It will bring your wish to the
Great Spirit—He alone knows the thoughts of butterflies- and He’ll grant that
wish.
By the way, “psyche” is the Greek word for both “soul” and “butterfly”.
It stems from the belief that butterflies are human souls seeking
reincarnation. To early Christians, the butterfly also symbolized the
transformed soul and was held as a sigil of metamorphosis. Celts thought women
became pregnant by swallowing butterfly souls—a belief echoed in feng shui cosmology that holds
butterflies as symbols of fecundity and fertility.
Say, we had a sourpuss neighbor who detested caterpillars
and she went out of her way to have our golden shower tree chopped dead. That
tree served as nursery for a pale-yellow species of butterflies, the sort that
some cultures believe as spirits of the dead, why, our slew of dogs often
howled at that butterfly nursery tree—consider that an instance when dogs
barked up the right tree. For years,
that sourpuss wanted to bear a child; she remained aridly barren. Sad
coincidence.
Remember that paean to butterflies—the Ray Bradbury time
travel story dubbed “A Sound of Thunder?” The wee critter and its offspring can
generate tons of viable seeds that translate to googols of fruits, food and
fodder to sustain life and nurture ecological systems throughout time. In the
Bradbury tale, a butterfly’s death canceled all that, which sent ripples
through time and wreaked gargantuan domino effect on history.
Just wait and see, kiddo, we’ll have that sanctuary for
psyche and soul soon—and with ‘em we’ll send a lot of wishes on the way to
realization, mwa-ha-ha-ha-haw!
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