Butterflies

Last Sunday was Father’s Day and I was thinking of a particular father’s day post I had in my mind that time but was so busy I couldn’t put thoughts into words so fluidly. It’s two days later now but I thought what the heck, despite that it might be delayed, it would still feel right to write about these thoughts.

On Sunday morning, a huge brown butterfly hovered into our front door and settled on the door’s reddish cortina. The kids had noticed the flowingly elegant butterfly coming in and went to approach it. Perhaps disturbed by the sudden surge of movements and sound, the brown butterfly quickly went of and flew by our window outside, as I watched it’s low flight, so full and grand.

Eric of Wish You Were here had once written about the mystery of dark butterflies and what they had meant, and what folk belief speak about it. I too was so mystified by this and the very coincidence of it. I am here in far southernmost city of Zamboanga and Eric is in bustling Manila and yet, the notions about huge butterflies suddenly appearing become so uniform and general to my own (pleasant) surprise. Eric had proffered then the idea that these sudden and unexpected butterfly appearances do have supernatural connotations where those butterflies personified or even carried the spirits of dead loved ones who for some reason, came to visit the living.

On that morning two days ago—-on Father’s Day—-the huge brown butterfly came hovering oh so suddenly when in fact I haven’t seen any butterfly in our area for quite a long time now, like in several years. There ain’t really no butterflies here I must assure you (at least not within our immediate area); for reason perhaps that our location in the city had become so dull of nature, what with all the gregarious human activity that surround us, with industrial fumes conquering the vicinity, making nature less abundant and therefore the absence of natural occurrences like often pernicious butterflies and dragonflies drifting through weeds and flowerings.

This butterfly incident in fact had starkly reminded me of one very unforgettable day when I was a young lad. Just days after my beloved grandfather Unih died, a huge dark butterfly came into the sala of my Aunt Nene’s sparkling bungalow and stayed there even when we kids had tried to drive it away. An older cousin—-perhaps Ka Bebot or Ka Boyet—-uttered that we should not disturb it for it might be the spirit of a dead relative who came visiting. That’s the first time I heard about this butterfly notion.

In this ultra-modern world we live in—-the so-called post-space age or computer age—-it would be so trite for me to patronize such butterfly notion, purely supernatural and simple-minded. Yet I felt that the butterfly who came hovering on Father’s Day might just be a supernatural visitor from another elemental space and existence. Who could that elemental visitor be and whose spirit? Maybe that of my own father who died suddenly on that one fateful August morning last year. Or maybe that of my father-in-law’s who passed away eight years ago. Or perhaps that of my beloved grandfather who had once visited me in a very memorable dream when I was still so young.

I could never tell. Just like I could not tell exactly why the sun revolves around the Earth in approximately twenty-four hours; why the moon appears so full on some nights and disappears in some others. What forces of nature could be so exact in one way and at some other time could be so unrhymed?

Such perhaps, is just the ways of the world.