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Butterfly

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If you are going to become a butterfly and learn to float through the air, then you first must be the caterpillar and learn how to crawl. One can't simply just be a butterfly. Be the caterpillar, keep your head down, work hard, and dream big then one day, one day if the universe allows it, the time will come where you will open your wings and you will take to the skies.

Big Bill was not always so big. His memories stretch back to when he was about eighteen months old; yeah, he can remember back that far. When you have, it can always be a good thing to remember back to a time when you had not, but maybe in looking back you see that you really had a lot more than you realized.

At Grandma Lynn's with his mum Teresa, little Bill was playing with his blue, red, and yellow dumper truck out just beyond the open back yard door and something happened. Bill came inside and into the kitchen area, crying his eyes out. Mum and grandma at the time were sitting at the kitchen table though mum moved quickly not knowing what was wrong with her little boy. She moved down onto her knees in front of Bill.

'What's wrong little man?' she asks, 'did you fall down?'

Bill being just those eighteen months old cannot answer so well. Mum checks his elbows and knees; they are fine, no scratches, not cuts, no bleeding so he didn't fall but Bill is still crying. It is not a panicking kind of cry. He is not frightened or scared in any way. If he is in pain, then that pain is not obvious, nor can it be excruciating.

The boy had walked in through the back yard door without any hindrance so his feet, ankles, knees, and legs, in general, must be fine. Tears are still flowing as Bill is beginning to calm. He takes his mum by the hand then begins to lead her outside. He soon points to that blue, red, and yellow dumper truck of his. It is a large toy as far as toys go, much larger than the other toys he has with him. There is something on the back of that truck. A bee, a dying bumblebee, has Bill been stung?

'Where did it get you baby?' she asks.

Bill turns his head to one side and sure enough he has been stung, he has been stung on the left-hand side of his neck. Grandma Lynn has a cream, so it is soon applied, and a chocolate biscuit soon sees those tears fade away. Only eighteen months old yet able to tell of something that had gone a-rye.

To a child, a toddler, the world is a very big place. Surrounded by love then the world can be made smaller, safer, unfortunately sometimes things change, and the big bad world can show itself to be just that, big and bad. Returning as an adult to a place where you spent so much time as a child can give off somewhat of a feeling of being like Gulliver on his travels. What seemed so large and unending as a child turns around to be so small and tiny as an adult.

Grandma Lynn. It always makes Bill smile when he remembers his Grandma Lynn. As a child going to his grandma's house was always something special. It was a place he could play, a place where he was spoiled, a place where he was always safe, a place where a caterpillar could play pretend and imagine being a butterfly. Sometimes he would end up being there for weeks at a time, and for those weeks at a time, it would be just Bill and his grandmother. She had inspired him to go out into the world and seek all things good and he has done just that.

Standing alone in his moment of return there is another memory from being at Grandma Lynn's so long ago. Bill was five years old, and it was a bright summer's day out on the backyard lawn. Grandma Lynn on her way out with juice and goodies, she could see Bill lost in a moment. A white winged butterfly had come to land on the back of Bill's right hand. It remained there as Bill raised his hand in front of his face in amazement. A real moment of feeling the future coming to be in the present as if it were something long ago in the past.

The white winged butterfly took flight and circled five-year-old Bill three times before moving on. Bill followed after it for as long as he could until the confines of the backyard prevented him from following any further.

'I see you made a new friend.'

'Yeah,' says Bill being as content as any five-year-old can be.

As the years went by in Bill's young life, he always managed to spend time with Grandma Lynn. Bill was sixteen years old when disaster struck. His grandmother took ill and was hospitalized. Nineteen days passed and they seemed to be as lengthy a period of time as it did seem to also pass all too quickly.

Unfortunately, Grandma Lynn passed away on that nineteenth day and sixteen-year-old Bill was at her side when she passed. It hurt; it hurt unlike anything else Bill had ever felt before, a pain that refused to completely go away with time. Grandma Lynn's house was left to her daughter, Bill's mum, and in turn, if anything should happen with mum, the house would become Bill's.

Mum has always had health issues, and this is why, as a child, Bill spent so much time with his grandmother. As the years went by mum needed more and more care so Grandma Lynn's house was rented out and along with his own hard work Bill was able to ensure that mum received the care she needed until her time to pass came.

Now at thirty-five years of age, Big Bill is back at Grandma Lynn's for the first time in almost two decades, if he were to think about it then it probably is about nineteen years since he was last here, and things do indeed seem so small now compared to what they were and seen through the eyes of a boy all those years and more before.

How odd it is that as soon as he steps out into the backyard, he can almost see that blue, red, and yellow dumper truck he had when he was so young, complete with bumblebee and all. How odd it is too that he spies a single green coloured caterpillar on an outside ledge. Letting his mind wander he can almost see himself as a five-year-old out on a warm summer's day chasing after two white winged butterflies instead of one.

In this moment he feels good, he feels free, he feels as if a release of sorts has come for there will be no more tears, all tears have long since been shed. Yeah, all is good with the world. When the day he becomes a grandfather, a cycle will have come full circle…

 

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Written by actung
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