The Chrysalis

“Pssst!” I call my daughters from behind the tall grasses at the front of the house. The three-year-old shakes droplets from her water bottle for the ants to drink. The five-year-old clings barefoot to a signpost, halfway up. Lazily filling our last long languid days of summer.

I show them the chrysalis. A jade jewel hanging, hidden, dainty and delicate, with a line of tiny golden studs encircling the top. I discovered it yesterday but worried their excitement and exuberance might knock it down or damage it. They dance and wiggle too close. I steady the stalk and they each take turns marveling, too distracted to fight about who gets to see it first. I remind them not to touch.

The chrysalis will turn into a monarch, Google tells us. We read that butterflies taste with their feet. We learn about the life cycle, from egg to larvae, to pupa to adult. Because it’s the end of August, this butterfly is the great-great-grandchild of the monarchs that left Mexico in the spring. She will be migratory and won’t mate or lay eggs, but will emerge for a strenuous flight.

My kids race through the backyard to the house behind ours, where my parents live. In the morning, I helped Dad steady Mom to the back porch, lower her to the red recliner lawn chair, wrap her in a navy wool blanket like a cocoon. Since her diagnosis, her deterioration has accelerated. Worsening motor control, declining memory. My daughters’ chittering about the chrysalis moves too fast for Mom, but she smiles, nodding, head bobbing like a pigeon, encouraging them to keep talking.

We check on the chrysalis daily. They ask when it will hatch. In the backyard, they twirl through the sprinkler, slurp homemade fruit juice popsicles, and jabber about names—maybe PurplePink, or Shimmer, or Lemonade. I sit with Mom and we watch. She’s no longer able to hold a conversation and most of her early memories were lost before my daughters were born, her consciousness already drifting. I can’t ask what I want: how do I be a mother? Did she have worries too, about making mistakes, about my sister and I being okay? I navigate motherhood without her guidance. Our silence is eclipsed by sounds of the make-believe butterflies, fluttering among flowers, gathering pollen for their migration.

My daughters sketch monarchs, create stories. They drape their old baby blankets around their shoulders as wings. As they zoom past Mom, she can only reach out for them, her smile weak, her grasp left empty. My kids return to the chrysalis. Waiting, watching, bursting with questions: what will it look like? how will it know what to do? Until the morning, when I discover the hole. Miniscule, nearly imperceptible. Something parasitic invaded the chrysalis and devoured the insides, leaving only a husk. I shrivel at the thought of telling my children, of flattening them with grief. I cannot protect them from this loss. The shock pinches and pulls their faces. Their mouths stretch wide. They wail and wail. There is no consoling them.