Wings And a Prayer

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Butterflies Are Free

Hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies spend the winter in central Mexico.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

The rest of the group files into the room negotiating earthen floor as uneven as this mountainous land. As our blood sugar rises, so do our spirits.

I proclaim, "Tomorrow the butterflies will fly!"

Bill says, "Now that's optimism!"

His daughter says, "Sure is!"

"I like it!" Judy declares.

After we've had our fill, off we go to overnight in Zitacuaro, a small city with a festive character quite different from Morelia's formal, colonial charm. If Morelia is conservative Catholicism, Zitacuaro is a down-home, hand-waving, speaking-in-tongues revival. Its streets are streaked with the juices of fruits we don't know what to call by name. Candy is sold from wheel-barrows. Markets don't sell tourist trinkets; they sell chicken corpses doused in ice. We wander the peddler-filled streets until late in the evening when we meet up to swap stories at dinner.

Our conversation is varied, until Janet makes an odd observation. "Why haven't I seen many cats in Mexico?" she asks Paul, who shrugs.

One of the women on the far side of the table answers, "Maybe there's some folklore against cats."

Janet considers this, and says, "Maybe it's because cats kill butterflies."

I tell the group an old wives' tale I've heard about not allowing cats into bedrooms because it was believed the soul left the body in the form of a moth during sleep, and a cat might kill the soul as it tried to return. This seems to alter the tone of the conversation, and it leads to Janet's reason for coming to see the butterflies.

She says, "I'm here because I lost my son."

On the day Janet learned her 19-year-old son died, less than five years ago, she was sitting out on her deck when a strange butterfly appeared. It was a shade she'd never seen before, and it stayed with her on the deck all day. She says: "I knew it was him. I knew it was my son telling me he was okay. Ever since then, I've just had a thing for butterflies."