Our little one -- there! the boy crouched within the yellow Forsythia Blossoms -- he waits beyond his years, is patient as an old man is forced to be patient, for he hunts the butterflies that will soon come to this bright corner of the yard; no, he does not hunt them as most boys would, for a collection. He wants their sound. All else he's captured: the colors, the shapes, delicate both, but isn't the sound impossible? More delicate than their wings, than the multitude of scales we call "dust," is the sound wave created by the flap and dip of the butterfly.
Boy is covered in pollen. The skin on his forearms sticks to the skin on his biceps. Behind him, the sun is reluctant to set, and his eyes blink away tears from the glare reflecting off the tall windows a few feet away. A flurry of excited sparrows fill the branches surrounding him, one or two mistaking his head and knee for forsythia. Their argument swirls and expands to the nearby turf, to the maple trees on the boundary of his father's property, and then the whole cloud of small birds is gone, and our boy remains -- glad for the birds, but more so for the renewed silence.
His breath catches. Did the rowdy birds herald the butterflies' arrival, or did the silent ones wait for their moment? No matter, for now the giant monarchs are landed -- too many to count -- and the swallowtails are next, all manner of moths and bees to come. Yet, before the buzzers fill the air, he closes his eyes and listens. And now the gift he's waited for: a brush of impossibly light legs on the tip of his nose. The wings! They touch both cheeks and spread a minute coolness on his face. He dares not breathe, but he lets his eyelids open, slowly open, and all the world is orange seen through the living stained glass quivering here on the bridge of his nose.
A bark and a crash, and Molly, his ever-faithful cocker spaniel, sends the fliers up and up. "Molly!" Our boy turns so that his dog bows her head and tucks her tail. "I told you to stay." But even now she cannot stay -- no, she wiggles her way under the branches and flowers to her master's side, shaking with the excitement of finding him. "Oh, alright dog, alright!" He scoops Molly into his lap and pets her head and back, yet the quiet sensation of the butterfly remains.
The sun sets with boy and dog within the forsythia, their supper a world away.
"And do you know how many there were?"
I told him I didn't.
"Well, I don't know either. Maybe millions!" He said this last word with a laugh that meant he knew it wasn't millions -- an inside joke for us -- but then again...
I said maybe another time.
"Okay," he said, and then commenced with his wash. He, too, had a thick pollen coating, mostly over his hair, and needed a good soak. "I'll put lots of bubbles on my head to work on the sticky -- that will help." He wasn't talking to me any longer, only narrating, explaining himself to himself. "Mountains...of...soap!"
I was in the other room by this time, but I could still hear his arms as they cut through the water and bubbles, the former plopping, the latter fizzing. He didn't want me to read to him, so I tried to read to myself. However, the image of our boy sitting among the monarchs was much more appealing at that moment than my book. I jotted down some thoughts for a story as I remembered seeing him round the corner of the house, dog in hand, yellow as the sun.
"Do you know?"
I'd missed a question. I asked him to repeat it.
"I went under for a long time just then," he said. "Do you know what? It was like when that one butterfly landed on my nose. Quiet." Then, in a new song he made up on the spot: "I heard the wings just then!" More seriously and without singing, he continued, "But do you think I'll hear that again?"
I said I hoped he would.
"Yeah. I'm going to try again. This time with my eyes open. I'll tell you what I see." He sneezed and then ducked under.
I didn't move, only watched the soap-waves tumble over the edge of the tub. They had a distinct spring tint to them, an extra lightness.
His head popped up, and he said, "It's so yellow in there!"
"Well, there's pollen everywhere," I said.
He went back under without comment. I heard him squirming, and the bubbles -- they began to pop and disappear, releasing the forsythia's breath right before my eyes. It was my turn to catch and hold the silence on my nose, for when I came close and sat on the bath stool, certain kicks from the boy swimmer sent a wobble of soap toward me -- there it was, on the very tip of my nose: the quiet of a boy's late afternoon. And just like that, like the flip of a butterfly's wing, or the wisp of a child's smile, it was gone.
"Did you see me?"
"I did," I answered, and I let the wet on my face remain for a moment more.
"I'm going again."
He went. And I was glad for monarchs and forsythia blossoms. And this wisp of boy.
