When I was a little girl my world was full of bright colors. The sky was such a shade of robin's egg blue that I thought for sure God had painted it himself with a soft wide roller. The grass was green and soft. It was a cushion when I fell from the monkey bars after trying to walk on the sky. My world was bright and alive.

Alive were the animals and insects that scurried, and hopped, and walked on one thousand legs across my backyard! I loved to chase them! My very favorite were the butterflies! Their colorful wings and ugly black bodies were a joy to chase. I chased tiny white ones that liked resting on the cabbage in our garden. Fluttering near the ground, I clapped my hands after them hoping to hold one tight in the cup of my hands. I called them my "cabbage butterflies".

Cabbage butterflies were excitable and flew crazily close to my hands. But they were too fast for me to catch. My friend Phillip, who was a whole year older than me tried to catch a cabbage butterfly. But he gave up even before I did.

My favorite butterfly was an orange and black butterfly. It had large wings and used them slowly. When the wind blew, it would float across my back yard.

A black and orange butterfly rested just outside the reach of of the shadow of my favorite Maple tree. I tiptoed across the yard with my fingers poised to grab a pinch of its wing. As I came close, the sun in the sky twinkled as the gentle breeze jostled the branches of the tree up and down. And then…it was mine! I could hardly believe it as I held it between my fingers. It dangled by one strong wing, flapping furiously to free itself. I was surprised a wing so paper thin could feel so forceful as it tried to break loose.

I didn't say a word, and hardly took a breath. I was so astonished by my catch. Holding that butterfly in a pinch between my fingers, a smile of pure happiness was not blighted by pride or power. I was simply overjoyed to be touching something so fast and wild.
"We've got to put it under something so it doesn't get away."
I was brought back from my triumphant moment by Phillip's prudent advice. He rushed inside the house to get an empty butter bowl from my mom. We placed it under the bowl in a bare spot in the grass. For awhile we just sat near the overturned bowl. We couldn't see or hold the butterfly. It fought so furiously to be free, it nearly tore itself apart.

As the day grew later, I thought of the butterfly under the butter bowl. Could he breathe? Was he sad in his dim yellow world with only a glow of the sun? Should I move him into the grass so the dirt wouldn't bother him? As I thought of my once cheerful butterfly that gracefully moved its wings up-and-down in the bright blue sky, I knew that I couldn’t make my prison its home. I had chased after many butterflies. But when I caught this one, I knew that I had to let it go.

I talked this over with Phillip and he refused. He wanted to keep it, even though we couldn't look at it.

So, when Phillip wasn't looking I crept over to the butter bowl and tipped it over. The butterfly sat in the dirt spot flapping its wings up-and-down, slow as the breeze. It didn’t know that it was free.

Then Phillip spotted me in the dirt watching over the butterfly. He cried out "Nooo!" and ran toward us. The butterfly gathered its courage and flew away into the bright blue sky as Phillip reached the spot where the butterfly had been. He looked angrily at me.
“We couldn’t keep it Phillip. He would have died”
“We could have kept him. Do you know what you’ve done? "It won't come back to us."
"He was unhappy here"
I watched with Joy as my butterfly flew off into the bright blue sky. It soared on its wings in the breeze.
"We'll never catch another butterfly," Phillip said.

And he was right. I never chased another butterfly. Holding its paper-thin wings in my hands, feeling the dust as it rubbed on my fingers; it wasn't meant to be held. I wanted to touch the freedom and contain it. But now I just like to see one flying in the sun, floating on the breeze.