butterfly claps
January 20, 2021
I woke up this morning and immediately opened my News App. Today was Inauguration Day (any other Frozen parents want to keep calling it Coronation Day?!) Today we saw the first black, south Asian, woman Vice President ever to be sworn into office. As we’ve reached one year of Covid and and 400,000 US Covid deaths, a new President stepped into his role and vowed to take control of the pandemic.
There was quite a lot of information that the news could have… newsed to us today. But do you know what the first article on my News App said?
Scientists have finally worked out how butterflies fly.
Well, that is something. (Until this very day, I had no idea that scientists didn’t know how butterflies fly.) Cheers to you scientists who figured it out and, more importantly, cheers to you for not letting something like Inauguration Day overshadow your big discovery.
The burning question on everyone’s mind, I’m certain, is: how do butterflies fly?
It turns out, as scientists have ever-so-recently just discovered, that butterflies fly by “clapping” their wings together.
Clapping.
This made me think of almost one year ago, when families and neighbors joined together on their balconies to clap for healthcare workers - not even knowing at the time that those workers would give thousands of more hours of their time, their emotional and psychological stability, even their lives.
The clapping became the pandemic anthem. It became our family anthem too - celebration became our way of surviving.
Rayne submitted her science project to the Zoom science fair? Celebration donuts!
Bradlee graduated from pre-school and got to wave to her teachers from a distance? Celebration picnic!
Dad is working from home now? Celebration baking show!
Birthdays were under-attended and over-celebrated (picture kid-friendly champagne and a blow-up hot tub).
Summer family adventures were celebrated with a brand new camper.
100 days of homeschool was celebrated with a full-blown indoor Field Day.
Dad going back to work was celebrated with an overnight winter trip to a Yurt.
We celebrated the little, the big, and everything in between. We have worked hard to keep joy alive this past year. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been really difficult at times. There have been countless nights I’ve let myself cry over our “losses”.
I cry about my sweet kindergartener who missed out on her first year of real school - the year that was designed for kids to learn socializing and friendship-making. But then I think about the little club of neighborhood friends that the girls have bonded with. They call themselves the Mississippi Sleds and they sled all day, every day. They even have a theme song.
I cry about the ballet recital that never happened - the one that we marked on the calendar 6 months ahead of time. But then I think about the father-daughter dance that my husband choreographed and performed in the basement with Rayne.
I cry about my two year old baby because this was supposed to be his year of mommy-and-me activities while his big sisters were at school. But then I think about his sweet little voice every morning when he asks his big sister, “Pippa, are we going to play baby today? Let’s pretend we are flying to a trip with our baby!”
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There has been a lot of deep, unimaginable pain this past year world-wide. The reality of loss (jobs, security, lives) is massive.
So when I see the never-ending complaining about masks, social bubbles, and working from home, I can’t join in on it. I’m thankful our only struggles were zoom school & cancelled recitals & unattended birthday parties (truthfully, those were MY struggles - my kids have been SO resilient, they have handled it all masterfully!)
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You know something else about butterflies? They go through a huge change. They transform from a long, round bug into a beautiful, clapping butterfly.
We have ALL gone through a big change this past year. Let’s emerge clapping our wings. Let’s make the best of hard situations. Let’s celebrate some things. Let’s get creative about community. We told our kids they couldn’t have indoor play-dates, so they spend HOURS outside every day with the Mississippi Sleds (comprised of 10 neighborhood kids who did not know each other just months ago) - and we live in Alaska! It’s NOT warm out there!
I wrote a book for my kids last year. I wanted them to have a book about a character who was going through a pandemic, just like they were (kids really love when they can identify with a character). I wanted them to be able to process some emotions they might be feeling about quarantine. And guess who the character in that book was? That’s right - a butterfly.
I wrote Clayton’s Wings to be a resource and an encouragement for your family, as well. Use it as a reminder to find the good in hard situations, as we navigate what will hopefully be the last months of this pandemic. Use it as a keepsake for your family to remember your own sweet times during the months of quarantine. Use it as a helpful resource for your kids to have a character who knows and feels what they’ve been experiencing this past year.
And most of all, remember to keep on clapping.
