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✦ Resurfaced from the archive: a story written back in 2017 originally titled (Over)hoop. No longer to be found online, so time to share it here.
This Sunday, I’m moving house. Between my old and new home, I’m doing a full-on round of house-sitting. Never before have I slept in so many different beds and on so many couches in such a short time, or taken care of this many plants and pets at once.
And now, since this week, I can add a new species to that list of cats and dogs: a butterfly named Colin. Or rather, Kolin with a K, because his name refers to his kind: Kolin the cabbage white. And no, I didn’t come up with this myself. My seven-year-old niece brought Kolin home as a chrysalis from a neighbor’s garden, and then didn’t take him along on holiday. Caring for a family chrysalis? That’s a serious responsibility. Things can go wrong, baby creatures are fragile.
Still, I reassured myself: if I can care for plants, cats, dogs, and children, I can care for a butterfly too. Kolin had been hanging for days in his cocoon, attached to the side of a plastic bucket with a lid, in the living room. And each morning and evening, I searched — hopefully — for a sign of life. My niece had done the same right up until she left, and I took over her watch with equal devotion.
Midweek, my sister texted with exciting news: the neighbor’s butterfly had already emerged from its cocoon. Also a cabbage white, and from the same garden. We took it as a hopeful sign. But it also made me a little impatient: Kolin was taking his time.
On Tuesday morning, the moment had finally come: Kolin, fully emerged, was fluttering restlessly around in his container. I waited for the rain to stop, butterflies don’t do well in wet weather. His wings were still damp, and therefore extra fragile. It took him a long time to fly away. Far too long, if you ask me. When it started raining again, I brought him back inside.
With the butterfly in one hand and my phone in the other, I obsessively studied the weather app, waiting for the perfect dry window. Eventually, it came. Still groggy, dressed in my pajamas, I stepped into the garden:
‘Come on, Kolin, you’ve got this!’
And he did. At first, he fluttered off uncertainly, wobbly, scattered, all over the place, but then he rose. Higher, and higher, and higher. Brave and steady, a dark silhouette against the grey, threatening sky. Hardly ideal weather for a butterfly to make his debut, but the rain clouds didn’t seem to faze him. I watched him go, proud.
Until, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a black shape rushing through the sky: fast, confident, and focused on just one thing. A bird, with far more flying hours in its wings than the young, naive cabbage white.
’Shit, shit, shit, Kolin, shit!’ I shouted.
The bird swooped and snapped. Missed! Kolin faltered, thrown off course, but flapped on bravely. Then they vanished into the sky: Kolin and the bird.
And now I’ll spend the rest of my life telling myself Kolin outflew that bird.
‘Hope keeps us alive,’ some say. ‘Hope is the first step toward disappointment,’ others warn. I believe both. And to which of those two voices I listen says a lot about how I’m feeling in that moment.
⁂
✶ Over the years ‘hope’ has come to mean something very different to me than it did eight years ago, when I wrote about Kolin. The hope I had back then? It's gone. And yet, I feel anything but hopeless. My new focus brings more calm, and fewer disappointments: trust. Trust feels like hope, only without the expectations. It’s simply knowing that things were, are, and will be okay. No matter what.
✦ Image 1. is from The Public Domain Review’s Public Domain Image Archive: a carefully curated collection of historic, royalty-free images spanning over 2,000 years of visual culture.
✦ Image 2. is from the Rijks Collection: a digital treasure trove curated by the Rijksmuseum, where thousands of artworks and objects from Dutch (and global) history are made freely available for public use and personal imagination.
✧ Dutch for beginners
Kolin with a K, sure. But why? In Dutch, a cabbage white is called a koolwitje. Kool means cabbage, witje is the diminutive of white. So basically, we call butterflies like Kolin little cabbage whites. Dutch may sound harsh at times, but in many ways, it’s actually kind of endearing.
✧ Originally written in Dutch by Merel Slootheer. Translated with care and intuition by Blackbird Ditchlord.