Reflections on the Thirteenth Week of Summer – Finding the Story

    Sweeping cobwebs from the ceiling of the guest room Tuesday morning, a lump of white schmutz clinging to the log wall caught my eye. Assuming I'd found another wad of cat hair, I set the broom down and grabbed the white blob with my left hand.

    A cabbage white butterfly, wings folded, sat on my palm.

    I cupped my right hand over my left and hurried to the great room.

   “You'll never guess what I have,” I said holding my hands toward Spence.

    He stopped tapping computer keys and looked up. “What?”

    Butterfly feet tickled my palm.

    I crossed the room, slid open the sliding glass door, and stuck my hands outside. “A cabbage white butterfly.” I moved my right hand away to free the butterfly. It sat on my palm. I lowered and raised my let hand several times. The butterfly didn't move.

    “Blow on it,” Spence said.

    As if blowing a kiss, I puffed. The butterfly opened its wings, rose, and swirled away. I turned to Spence. “I can write a story about the butterfly for my blog!”

    He cocked his head. “Do you have enough material to make a story?”

    I mentally reviewed Timons Esaias' seven point story.

1) A person. Check.

2) A place. Check.

3) A problem. Oops. Forget about 4, 5, & 6, the protagonist striving and failing three times before 7, the resolution. I needed a problem, the “what's at stake” writing challenge.

    I settled in my Adirondack chair, gazed out the sliding glass doors at cabbage white butterflies fluttering among pansy planters, and commanded my brain to create a problem. Nothing.

    I grabbed my camera, attached the zoom lens, and told Spence, “I'm going to get a picture of a butterfly then I'll think of a way to make the story.”

    He waved one hand and hit keys with the other.

    A flock of cabbage white butterflies swirled over the north garden. I stepped closer to three. They flew away. Even with my zoom lens, cabbage white butterflies kept out of range. Why hadn't I asked Spence to snap a picture of the butterfly on my palm before I puffed it away? I stood still, let butterflies zip my way, and squinted through the view finder. By the time the camera focused, it snapped garden vegetation where butterflies had been. I switched to close up mode and moved the camera along the flight path of the butterflies. After forty-nine tries, I had two possible pictures. In the first, a butterfly opened its wings above an out-of-focus purple cabbage. The other showed a butterfly flying down the blurred driveway. At least the cabbage white butterflies didn't resemble lumps of cat hair.

    I wrote my saga, complete with striving for picture more than three times and failing, then read it to Spence.

    He bobbed his head slowly and grinned. “Your problem,” Spence said, “is you don't have a problem. You're looking out not in.”

    “I'm writing about butterflies.”

    “No, silly. You're the butterfly.” He walked to the deck and turned on his sander.

    Sitting in the Adirondack chair, I ignored the blue and green outside the glass door to focus my gaze inside the story. I typed ideas in a list.

    My body clenched as if I were a white cabbage pulling away from a bird's beak. I, the protagonist, had struggled in the Adirondack chair, behind the camera, and against the “what's at stake” question that every writing instructor I'd ever had threw at me. No zombie apocalypse. No puzzling murder. Just a weekly blog of life at Wells Wood with a husband and two fat cats.

    With that, I blow this story out with the puff of a kiss and head off to enjoy butterflies.