Days of ‘butterfly innocence’ – you flit by like a breeze, easy on the heart and the mind. We run and play, here and there, perhaps in the mud or at the beach. All that bothers those young minds is a snack to fill the hungry tummies as those muscles develop, and the eyes watch the trees, the flowers, or perhaps that glorious butterfly as it hurries to make use of what little time it has. Little but full?
“Oh, my knee! Mummy, I hurt my knee.” That seems to be the highlight of the day, the catastrophe that has blighted a day that was otherwise just for playing and scampering around – you, me, us, or all of us together.
Then, it is raining, and suddenly, the day is lovely once more, and those young legs race out the door or even the window to lift the supple young face to the skies and let the rain tease the tender, firm cheeks.
“I would not dare to get caught, or I would be punished for playing in the rain and getting those freshly washed tresses all wet and messy again. So I tiptoe into the shower and learn how to bathe myself and get all cleaned up just before I am caught!”
What a day! And the blood runs in our veins at the excitement of all that has gone and passed.
“What am I talking about?”
“Am I sane, or is the here and now taking us back to the young days, searching for a way to hurry back in time – to find me, the old me?”
For there, just behind the door of the living room, I remember the whispers and the giggles – a girl betrothed, a dress fashioned to fit the young curves – for her knight is here, and the white horse is waiting.
The story of every day, every house, with a young girl – excited and eager for the coming celebration.
Up there, on the back of the horse, the brightness of its coat blinding and into the horizon, it takes her, the tail of her dress flying in the breeze.
Why does the dress have to be white? She is wandering in her mind, maybe as white as the horse, and the life to come is as bright as the butterfly racing beside its friend.
The butterfly has more wisdom than the white-clad innocence in all that resplendent glory—the days of playing and running or even the joy of scraping a knee – all gone.
The butterfly is saying her goodbyes to her friend.
The horse was never white, just the whiteness of innocence that made it so bright as to seem bright enough to be white.
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