butterfly girl

K is truly an amazing little girl, but this little detail seems absolutely uncanny to me...

She seems to attract butterflies.

The past two summers, all the time we have lived in this house, she has caught butterflies with her own two hands. When she was two, I couldn't believe it. When she was three, I chalked it up to her quietly sneaking up on it and gently grasping the wing. Today, the way she told it, the monarch just landed next to her on the front steps (and yes, she was there and finishing her lunch) so she picked it up. Of course I took lots of pictures. Then it went to her knee, and was completely content to just be there for a while. Then we decided to give the butterfly freedom so K brought it down to the rhododendron bush, in full bloom right now, and let the butterfly crawl onto the flowers. The yellow monarch seemed to want to gather strength again, so we just watched it, in awe of its beauty. C was squealing with delight.

And then it flew away.

K felt both happy and sad, she said. She would have liked to have held that butterfly all day, but knew that it was not the best for the insect and that it must be set free.

That can be such a hard lesson to learn.

I just held her for a while.