The Gift of Butterfly Weed

by Cynthia Hubbard

William Wordsworth wrote, "The child is father to the man."

The first time I became parent to my mother was an experience that would change my life -- one that brought together life and death, love and vulnerability, fear and hope and, most importantly, the wonder of gift.

Mother was dying of leukemia. She was in the hospital with her most recent bout of pneumonia. For some reason, no one had gotten around to bathing her in several days. Feeling somewhat stronger, she asked me if I would be willing to wash her hair if she were able to get herself into the tub. That was the first of many parenting rituals I performed with my mother over the coming weeks, each becoming more intimate, more a gift as she became more and more the helpless "child."

Mother always loved Butterfly Weed, or Pleurisy Root as it was traditionally known, named no doubt for some medicinal properties it was believed to possess. A member of the milkweed family, Butterfly Weed is a multi-stalked plant, each about 18 inches high, growing out of a single base. Its bright orange flowers would carpet entire fields and brighten the roadsides of our beloved summer island until overpicking reduced its numbers and earned it a place on the protected list. The flowers attract butterflies as a flame attracts moths, hence its more modern name. Sometimes as many as a dozen butterflies will flutter about a single plant giving the impression that the plant itself is pulsating with movement.

The year before she died, Mother heard from a friend how to grow Butterfly Weed from the seed pods that hang from the stalks as summer gives way to autumn. Evidently it was not an easy process and one that was frequently unsuccessful. That fall, she carefully planted some in the tiny four by six-foot plot we euphemistically refer to as a garden located off the corner of the house. The amount of sun the area receives is minimal, certainly not enough for any self-respecting tomato ever to ripen, but mint and thyme are hardy herbs that manage to hold their own. She told me what she had done and instructed me to be on the lookout for it.

The next summer, I was too busy helping her die to worry about the garden, let alone think about the Butterfly Weed seeds she had lovingly planted. The following summer, preparing the garden for some well-advanced lettuce plants, I pulled up an empty plastic pot from under the surface of the soil, and I remembered the Butterfly Weed. "Too bad," I thought "At least she tried."

The second summer after she died, as I was preparing the garden, I was about to pull up two weeds, but something about the tender stalks seemed vaguely familiar and I stopped myself. I decided to give them another year before yanking them out as "just weeds". The following summer -- now three years following her death (why is it that death moves to life in units of three?)--I was late coming to the island.

On a hot, humid late July day -- the mildew in the house particularly bad -- and having had my fill of Clorox and scrubbing, I was ready for a refreshing swim. As I came around the end of the house, I stopped dead in my tracks and my eyes filled with tears. There, in the garden, in all their glory, were two crowns of orange, Mother's final gift to me that had taken four years to come to their fruition of bloom. And to think that I had almost pulled them out in my impatience to rid the garden of weeds!

Of all the gifts that Mother planted in the garden of my soul, the Butterfly Weed was certainly the most special, partly because it is most tangible, but also because it symbolizes so much for me: the necessity of patience, the importance of time and the abiding nature of hope. The Butterfly Weed in my garden is colorful proof that life prevails in spite of our efforts to curtail it, ignore it and even yank it out! Most importantly, now, every summer, when the Butterfly Weed blooms, I can be her child again. I can marvel at its beauty and wonder in the fact that a seed my Mother planted, God saw to fruition years after her death, and I can trust in the promise of eternal life given to those who live in hope.