Where were the butterflies?

The Evergreen Chinese Ligustrum was in full, fragrant bloom recently. In a post written last year, I complained about that awful, sickeningly sweet fragrance I despise and could become sick over, but the bees and butterflies swarm these evergreens like flies on cow plop. Around the first of June on a sweet smelling afternoon, I experienced a butterfly and bee bonanza that happens only once a year.

There I was, photographing butterflies with a camera I would have never imagined owning forty years ago and wondered why I never saw butterflies like these when I was a child. I was a kid that felt trapped inside the house and thrived on being outdoors.

Near the stinking white flowers, butterflies and bees, I spent hours that weekend contemplating and sorting through a few things. There were events I remember like they happened last week but I don’t remember butterflies. Why?

I was a very observant kid and remember the flighty off-white butterflies in the city that we would capture and hold for a minute or two and release. Yay! Honestly, my big blues never saw dramatic swallowtails. If I saw them, I would remember as well as the times I saw daddy longlegs at my cousin’s country home in Finksburg, Maryland. They scared me then and they still make me shiver.

I would remember Giant Tigers, Pipevines, Buckeyes, American and Painted Ladies, and Silver Spotted Skippers.

Who could ever forget a Zebra Swallowtail?

In the city, we didn’t have space for ornamental ponds, lots of foliage and trees or landscaped gardens. My Mom grew Marigolds, a few tomatoes, Zinnias, and Mexican Roses on an eighteen inch patch between the chain link fence and sidewalk out back which led to a concrete alley speckled with black gravel. Oh, I loved the games we played in that alley.

We also had an overgrown and heavenly Lilac bush my Mom called the Breath of Fresh Air in Fume Town. There were transit bus fumes up the avenue I remember well on humid, hot days. The watermelon, canalope, and seafood vendors sang to us on horse-drawn carts in the alleys early in the morning before the sizzling sun was high. The milkman arrived early, too. Our tiny front yards each had a tree, usually a sappy maple. There was never a need for gas or electric powered lawn cutting machines as most of our lawns consisted of clover. Hey, it was green and we spent many summer days looking for ones with four leaves.

Not many butterfly memories but I remember plenty of bees that stung bare feet and lightning bugs in July!

My parents, children during the Great Depression, were survivors more than naturalists. My Mom shared her late-thirties and forties farming stories that I loved to hear but my Dad grew up on a city block. Their lifestyles were never more or less than “no frills”.

In elementary school, I don’t remember being taught much about science but I do remember history, perhaps because I hated that subject most of all. The tomboy in me diverted my attention to the classroom windows and to daydreams about my next game of dodge ball on the side street off the avenue instead of listening to a boring science or history lesson given by a teacher who really didn't care. Boring, boring, boring.

Children are fortunate now. There is an enthusiastic awareness and focus on the environment and nature. The fifties and sixties weren’t times of nature awareness, I guess. Post war, revolution, and more war – a very different era.

I didn’t learn about butterflies but I learned to be compassionate towards ethnic groups. I learned to be generous with brown-eyed, olive skinned, curly haired, skinny Jackie, my elementary school Italian playmate straight from Sicily. She had one freckle on her face and I had thirty-one. Jackie and her large family lived about fifteen doors down the avenue and even though her parents were non-English speaking shoemakers, Jackie didn’t always wear leak-free shoes. They grated fresh romano cheese and ate spaghetti every day as a side dish for supper, didn’t have carpet and walked on cracked tile floors. Poor Jackie never owned a bike so she rode my two-wheeler. I taught her to ride that bike and my parents bought her snowballs or nickle-sicles from the trucks that rode the back alley several times a day. Jingle bells from heaven! Her enormous older sisters, Rosina and Maria, beat her. It was not a game. I’d wince and swing back at them many times and used switches if I had enough time to plan my attack. What a wild bunch of bitches we were!

I learned that although my neighbor across the street with Down’s syndrome scared me with his size, demeanor, and appearance for many years, Frankie wouldn’t hurt a fly… I never saw Frankie leave his home until he died, at 29. I was only 9. From inside my living room window I'd sit and watch friendless Frankie, afraid to be near him - I don’t think he ever had a friend or playmate.

And I learned that Jews made the best bread and pastries and owned most of the jewelry stores and dress shops in town. Polish were the hardest workers and the most generous souls, Greeks and Germans were the best cooks in the best restaurants, and Italians had the cleanest neighborhoods in Baltimore City. Yes, you could lick the marble steps leading to their front doors.

I learned that calling an ambulance for the alcoholic lady down the street who fell in the gutter in front of my home was the right thing to do. She bled, hallucinated, and almost died. 1966. I was eleven years old then. And shocked.

When I was a teenager, I learned to tuck my ones low in my sock before I boarded the bus and shopped downtown with my girlfriend, very tall Mary Lee. I always looked up to her for that reason. Years later, when I was a young adult chick working downtown, I learned to always carry a large umbrella to be used as a defense weapon. A few truant kids felt it on their backs and limbs more than once! Those thieving brats deserved my wrath.

I understood and comprehended early.

I learned not to make fun of little Jimmy and his family (Dad called them hillbillies). Jimmy was my childhood next-door neighbor for twenty years. He was a crybaby all his life and into his teens but his Mom died of cancer and his Dad committed suicide soon after… He was left with his mean uncle, so Jimmy had good reasons to cry all the time. His sad life all happened right next door with only twelve inches of cinderblock and drywall between us.

I learned to steer clear of the feel-good stuff that flowed freely in the girls’ Catholic high school I attended in the late sixties and early seventies. Those gals had the funds and I didn’t. Funny – I didn’t miss it or need it or want it.

That’s when, in my high school years, I realized I was financially challenged. It doesn’t take long for things like this to come to light when you are in math class with daughters of medical doctors. I didn’t realize my status until 1969, so it was alright because in many ways I was very rich, indeed! It was all good. I didn’t have butterflies but I had a boom box.

So, I did not learn to correctly identify bugs and butterflies and wish I had...

It isn’t too late. I am ordering a field guide for bugs and butterflies this week ;-) Any suggestions?