I met a man

Haven't written in a long time.

Sorry.

But it's not because of any sort of block or even laziness.

I haven't written because I met a man.

I met a man who is afraid of butterflies.

And not just any ho hum skiddishness when the little insects take flight, but the kind of fear that stops his breath, grips tightly to the base of his spine, and sends him running in the other direction. The sort of fear we all feel at the sound of an engine's backfire or the late night sound of footsteps by our bedroom door.

And he's not ashamed either. In fact his story is quite good. Its very real.

"Have you ever seen a butterfly up close?" he'll finish. "They're fucking scary."

His story is important to me because Calvin is also afraid of butterflies.

In fact I've been dreading the coming of the spring, where the butterflies flutter by en masse at our favorite park. The field between the sand box and the big kid slides turns a jolly skip into a terrifying run. There is crying and screaming and pleading to go home. And I acquiesce out of fatherly shame, and can hear the disappointed "tsk tsk" of our child psychologist.

"He needs to face his fears. One at a time. And you have to push him to do it." he said.

"But how do I know when to stop? Isn't there a point when he's freaking out so badly that it creates more trauma than it's actually worth?" I ask.

"Nope."

I like this doctor. He taught me a lot. He answered my questions. He didn't bullshit me about the inadequacies of modern psychology. I once asked him if Calvin's fears were going to haunt him the rest of his life or if their would come a time when it would just be over. He just shrugged and told me that he had no idea.

In fact, after three sessions, he said "We're done. You know enough to deal with these situations on your own. Each one will be more challenging than the next, because he will have learned how to try to work around you, but you'll have a common dialogue, and as long as you're consistent and persistent, you'll win."

And he was right. It's become second nature to me now to recognize Calvin's avoidance. How to get him to tell me what he was afraid of. How to get him to face it.

We also created a "Scary Scale"

His face would pale at something and I would say;

"Big scary, medium scary or little scary?"

For something like the sound of an approaching motorcycle his hand would shoot way up into the air indicating "Big Scary" Dogs might be "Medium Scary" unless they moved toward him and became "BIg Scary"

The vacuum cleaner was "Little Scary" but eventually become "Zero Scary."

We also spent hours making lists of things that are "Good to be afraid of" (Sharks, fire, aligators) and things that are "Bad to be afraid of" (Slides, lawnmowers, butterflies).

And we made progress.

But dude, it's hard work. Sometimes satisfying, but freaking hard.

Not all of his fear manifests itself as screaming and running. Sometimes it intuition. For example, he was chasing around the jungle gym with some kids and every time they ran up the steps to a particular slide he would veer off and wait for them at the bottom. I saw it three times and then after a bit of cajoling I got him to tell me that he was afraid of that slide.

So, then we went up to the top, him kicking and screaming. I forced him to sit on my lap as we both went down the slide. Then we walked right back up and I helped him into the tube and gave him a little push and he went down all by himself. Finally spirited by his own success, he forced me to stay down at the bottom while he ran up and went down the slide alone.

But it doesn't end there. The next time we went to the park we had to start all over again. The second time was easier (less kicking and screaming) and it took three more outings before I could successfully say that he is no longer afraid of the slides at Castle Park.

And it's like this with everything. Two steps forward, one step back. Eagle, Bogie, Eagle, Bogie. Which, at the end of the day is a damn fine score, but it's exhausting as hell for this procrastinator.

Then I met a man who is afraid of butterflies.

A complex, rational, intelligent man who is capable in every other way.

Just afraid of butterflies.

And then suddenly it occurred to me that maybe fear isn't all good vs bad, black vs white. Fear is our genetic response to danger. And if danger exists, if there is such a thing as danger, then maybe there's danger in butterflies.

Pause . . .

think about that for a moment . . .

If there is danger,
Then there's danger in butterflies

There lays the meat of this cautionary tale.

That is a damn fine lyric. it's the kind of "turn of phrase" that just melts my creative soul. Oh goodness, and the rhyming possibilities are endless. Eyes, skys, lies, lays, tries, dies, cries, size. And that's just off the top of my head.

Boom

Boom

Pow

But here's the rub.

I could never complete it. Endless notes. Scribbles on the back of grocery lists. A long line of instrument and melody changes. It was a requiem one day, then a gospel choir the next. Mornings with a cup of coffee, late nights with a bottomless glass of wine. Nothing clicked. I never ran out of ideas, again I'm not a believer in writer's block, but nothing I thought of had the sticking power of class room paste.

For months I have refused to give it up. Hell, I even wrote a lovely little duet for the wife and I in the hopes that stepping away might be the only solution to what was becoming my daily mind suck.

And still . . . nothing of value.

So yesterday, tired of banging on my piano, I mowed the lawn.

For the last year, Calvin has been both fascinated and terrified by the lawn mower. At first he would run and hide in his room. Eventually his fascination got the better of him and he would watch from a window or in the case of the front lawn, he would insist that I put him in the car with the windows rolled up so he could still see but not hear.

And yesterday he watched me storm out of the garage and into the backyard. I open the shed and pulled out the mower. I adjusted the blade height and began the slow back and forth meditation of a man and his lawn.

About halfway through my pendulum of serenity, I looked across yard back at the house expecting to see his pale little face pushed up against the sliding glass door. But instead of standing at the window with his hands greasing up the glass, he was sitting quietly at the edge of the grass.

Somehow, in the same hour that I had stopped trying to capture his fear, he had stopped being afraid.

I had met a man who is afraid of butterflies.

So I spent two months believing that its okay. Wait . . . not just okay . . . but that their was enough beauty in the danger of butterflies that I bloodied my knuckles to prove it.

But their really isn't. It really isn't okay to be afraid of butterflies.

Calvin knows it and is doing his best to move on.

I should do the same.