CHLOE BOLAN

THE LARGE BLUE

I can’t say I was ever interested in insects. However, I did thrill to see butterflies trembling by, capture lightening bugs in a jar to create a shred of night sky, and shiver with pleasure as ladybugs crawled up my arm. But there are just too many others like cockroaches and spiders and flies that repel me physically. Not to mention the hated mosquito and the itchy welt it leaves. Still, I had to finish this course in Botany 101, and strangely enough my choice of writing about thyme led me to the alien world of insect metamorphosis. 

The other students in my four-year commuter college had taken on garden flowers and ferns, which is why I chose a kitchen herb. I wasn’t very close to the other students since they were decades’ younger and cultural generations away from my own experiences. They talked about popular bars where they hung out, weekend parties they survived, and bands I’d never heard of. Still, they were far from a cohesive group since most of them drove home after class to their second life: family, work, and home work. 

I drove home to my younger son, who would soon be off to a California college, while my older son lived with two roommates and was almost engaged. Nevertheless, he’d stop by once a month for a free Sunday dinner. We’d mention his father and his new young wife briefly, and even though my ego was bruised by an element I could never compete with, namely youth, I was secretly relieved Bart had left. His grasshopper lifestyle was the opposite of mine.  A good paying, steady job would satisfy me, letting me keep whatever material goods I thought precious, like my house. 

But back to thyme. Why is it pronounced “time”? It made me defocus. Maybe because I knew I wouldn’t have enough of it. Cancer was seeing to that. Breast cancer. For the second time in less than five years. I was hopeful, naturally, but something told me to enjoy every day.

So why was I back in school? Because I was only one elective, Botany 101, from a complete bachelor’s degree.  And then I’d get an automatic raise, enough to eventually pay off my mortgage and leave my sons the security of the house. They could sell it, but at least they’d have something. And even if they blew it, I wouldn’t be around to scold them. They’d have to face themselves. If only I could be given the time to make the finances happen!

Researching thyme, I found that the great blue butterfly of Britain, Maculinea arion, preferred a barely opened flower head of thyme as the birthbed for its eggs. Right away, I became interested. Especially since this butterfly had gone extinct in Britain and was only resurrected by the Swedish version imported to the island. 

I discovered the butterfly was also connected to ants. Ants were on my neutral insect list. I didn’t like them in large numbers, but one or two wouldn’t upset me. So, I plummeted into the life cycle of the thyme seeking, blue-hued butterfly.  

I saw a photo of the shiny, tiny butterfly eggs on top of the thyme, like a sprinkling of baby pearls, and knew the next stage--since we’d already studied butterflies--consisted of the eggs hatching into little worms, who then eat like Sumo wrestlers before the seemingly comatose chrysalis stage. But the blue butterfly, after hatching into a fuzzy pink caterpillar, ate little. Instead it fell from its thyme tower to the ground and waited for an alert ant to discover it. Not just any ant, but a red ant, a myrmica sabuleti. 

In one version of my research, a prestigious entomologist stated the caterpillar’s scent lured the ant; another claimed the scent and siren songs did it. Then another said the caterpillar had a sweet sac on its body the ant couldn’t resist ingesting. In all the versions, the discoverer ant thought the creature resembled an infant ant and so had to be brought back to the safety of the nursery. 

That done, the pink caterpillar, imitating the smell of baby ants, found itself lying in a bed of its favorite food, baby ants, of which it ate voraciously. In fact, the large blue in this stage might lessen the nest of 500 grubs before it morphed into the chrysalis stage. Later, it would emerge from the underground ant nest as its most magnificent self, the large blue butterfly. From that illustrious moment on, it lives a short butterfly life: searching for a mate if a male, laying eggs if a female, and sucking nectar from the heart of available flowers.  

I also detailed why the insect went extinct, which had to do with the tall grassy pasture the Brits preserved for it. Unknown to them, the land was unfriendly to the duped red ant. This species needed well grazed grass close to the warm earth to thrive. They migrated. Unfortunately, without them, there was no more large blues. The grass was buzz cut, the Swedish cousins came, and my paper had a Hollywood ending. But I couldn’t help thinking how the large blue reminded me of myself. 

I was adopted and must have run through much of my parents’ finances. They didn’t mind, of course, and saw me earn an associate’s degree. But then, instead of seeing me emerge as a large, blue butterfly with a solid job, then marriage and children, my mom and soon after my dad passed away. However, I knew they loved me and wished me a contented life. 

Maybe because my biological mother had left me at a church doorstep and was never traced, and my biological father was even more anonymous—maybe even to my mother--that my parents insisted I wait to marry, and once I did, should stay married. So there too I let them down. After fifteen years, Bart and I had grown apart, only neither of us realized it. We had no more dual dreams; only our sons mattered. He’d invite friends from work to sporting events or concerts, after I declined, and then that developed into inviting only one. 

I showed my botany paper to another student who seemed adrift. Her topic was peonies, but she wanted to see how I’d organized my paper, so I gave her a copy. She invited me out for coffee before the papers were handed in to thank me and we began talking about the large blue in affectionate terms. She and her husband Leo were moving with their three children and two shelter dogs to the next state south, Oregon, and she seemed to be treating our coffee break as the last hour to relax before packing. 

“You know,” I told her, “that strange life cycle of the large blue reminds me a little of my life,” and I explained why. 

She looked at me with a misty sadness. “It reminds me of my life, too,” she said.

I waited silently as a curious pseudo-scientist and fellow student. 

“I was the child of a single mom. I’m not even sure she was married to my flyaway father although that’s what she’d tell people. When I was eight, she met Howard Wixton, who had a small business but closed it down in July to run a summer camp for kids. He was kind enough to waive costs for me so I could spend a blissful three weeks in the Cascades. And then he married my mother. One night, putting me to bed, he joined me, and from then on sexually abused me. I don’t know if my mother was ever aware or wanted to be, although I hinted enough about it. ‘Now, Pamela,’ she would say, ‘We have a home, you have your own room and lovely clothes, so let’s be happy.”

“I ran away at eighteen and my mother still hasn’t found me. If it hadn’t been for Leo, I don’t think I could have survived.”

I was saddened and sickened by her story and wanted to put both her mother and Howard in jail for life. But instead I asked her how this related to the large blue.

“The ants are a natural enemy of the butterfly and so for the large blue to have to trick its way into the enemy camp and survive, especially since it was a baby, well, I guess I thought of myself surviving my stepfather.”  

I never saw Pamela again, but I’ve never forgotten her. I got an F in Botany and when I finally tracked down Professor Zeigler to ask why, he told me I had copied another student’s paper.  I was flabbergasted. “If you mean Pamela’s,” I said, “that paper was mine. She asked to see it.”

He didn’t believe me. “She told me she was doing her paper on peonies,” I added and it seemed to spark a lost memory in his red-from-reading eyes. I stood firmly in front of him until he spoke. “Yes. That was her topic. I was surprised she’d changed it.”  

“If you look at my answers on our mid-term, Professor, that might prove I’m the writer of the large blue,” I said. I had a feeling Pamela wasn’t a very good writer although her story telling was excellent, whether true or not. Again, his face showed another level of awareness as to my skill.  

“I’ll consider what you’ve said, Laurene,” he blurted out and left.

Weeks later I received my revised grade, an A, and I wondered fleetingly what Pamela’s grade was. My friend in administration said the usual policy for a professor who wasn’t sure if a student had cheated was to let their grade stand. I wasn’t out for revenge; while I didn’t know if I’d received Solomonic justice, I did receive my legitimate A. 

After I got my degree, I found a better job and have almost paid off my mortgage. I also have a special man named Piotr hanging around. The only thing that clouds my future is my cancer. I’ve been in remission for three years now, but I can’t dispel the feeling that it might not last. 

One night, Piotr and I were discussing how every day’s a victory with this time-focused disease, and I told him I had the philosophy of a red ant. After I explained the large blue’s metamorphosis, I concluded: “So, I’m an ant. Hard working, socially responsible, able to be deceived.”

He looked puzzled. “And who would be the large blue in your insect analogy?” he asked.

“My biological parents. And Pamela. Irresponsible, lucky.”

He shook his head. “To me they represent the grasshopper, safe for now, but winter will come.” I felt he lost his point by throwing in another insect, but his Eastern European background couldn’t resist moral lessons.

 He smiled at me. “Laurene, you’re a large blue, even though you’re not really large and your eyes are brown.”   

I had to smile. “A butterfly is a more romantic image than an ant,” I said.

“To my mind,” he philosophized as he often did, “the butterfly is inseparable from the ant. It wouldn’t exist without it. As the large blue, you have to work hard to deceive the ants and ensure your future. Taking a risk is being responsible to your nature. Your divorce was a risk, but here you are. In my arms.” 

“Except Piotr,” I said, snuggling up even closer, “I’m not deceptive and that’s the key role of the large blue.”

“I think you’d do anything to outwit cancer,” he said, and tears filled my eyes. Somewhere in my heart, underneath my ravaged breast, all I wanted was to survive.           

“Regardless of the future, Laurene, you’ve chosen love—life. And nothing can take your choice away.” Then in that thick accent of his, he said, “So you fly, girl!” and kissed me with concupiscence.   

Image and words courtesy of © 2020 Chloe Bolan