Papa and the Monarch: A Story in Wings and Color
(Excerpt from my upcoming memoir)
It was the end of 1999—
that thin, trembling moment when one century exhales
and another waits, quietly, to inhale.
I had been away from home for five years,
learning how to belong to a foreign sky, (America) learning how to call a borrowed place home.
Home-from-home, I used to say,
as though naming it could soften the distance.
The future felt complicated then.
Beautiful, yes—but heavy.
Winter had arrived early,
and not just outside the window.
Then came that phone call.
Calling Papa always carried a small ache—
not dread, but awe.
He was my father,
yet he spoke like a sage,
a man who held tomorrow loosely in his palm.
His words arrived already ripened,
almost prophetic,
as if he had walked the road ahead of me
and returned just to leave signposts.
I remember the scene exactly.
The kitchen—painted red,
a bold, waking color,
the kind that refuses sleep.
My ex wife’s voice drifted in, gentle and knowing:
“Papa is on the phone.”
I leapt up, swallowed my food whole.
Back then, the call cost a dollar a minute.
Time was expensive.
Wisdom was priceless.
He told me to hurry and eat.
I told him no—
just talk, Papa, you worth every dollar of mine!
Let the clock run.
Let the line stay open.
He laughed.
He said she had told him I was hitting the blues.
I tried to deflect it,
pretended confusion.
He answered softly,
“Because she cares.”
Then, with that calm certainty of his, he said,
“I already knew. I dreamt you were in a funk.”
I confessed.
Winter will find you, no matter the country.
Distance will do its quiet work.
He laughed again—
a laugh that warmed rooms he wasn’t even in.
Then, as if suggesting tea, he said,
“Paint a monarch.”
A pause.
A butterfly?
“Yes,” he said.
“And paint it big.”
I protested. Joked. Stumbled.
Butterflies felt too sweet, too tender.
He let me ramble, then said—steady and sure—
“No, son. Study the butterfly.”
He spoke of metamorphosis.
Of reformation.
Of patience that does not rush itself.
Of pain that must be honored, not skipped.
Of waiting for the product.
Of enduring the cocoon
and still emerging with wings.
“Paint them big,” he said.
“Love painting them.”
I didn’t know then
that he was handing me a compass.
I had never painted a butterfly.
Not one.
Not in my portfolio.
Not in my imagination.
But I listened.
The first butterfly I painted was red—
vibrant, unapologetic, alive.
Chromatic fire against the canvas.
The monarch appeared exotic, almost royal,
as though it had traveled from a dream
and landed gently in my studio.
I painted it the way Papa would love it—
bold, generous, unafraid of taking space.
When I sent him the image,
there was a pause on the line.
Then he said, quietly, proudly,
“Yes… you even beat my expectation.”
He laughed again.
“I didn’t know you would make it this big.”
I told him,
“Pa, I’ve got a Dodge Caravan. It fits. I can carry it.”
He said something then
that still walks with me:
“Someday that butterfly will travel places.
And you’ll be glad you made it big.”
He was right.
I went on to paint monarchs for hospitals—
especially children’s hospitals,
where wings are needed most.
For retirement homes,
where memory leans toward light.
Some I sold.
Some I loaned.
Some I simply left behind,
as offerings that didn’t need my name.
There is one now—
large, luminous—
resting in a retirement home near Marygrove College in Detroit,
quietly watching time pass,
still teaching.
I fell in love with them.
I gave them names—
secret names,
names meant only for joy.
The butterfly continues to instruct me:
about seasons,
about patience,
about how nothing truly beautiful
rushes its becoming.
Tonight, I’ve come full circle.
I laugh softly as I remember.
The space I’m working with now is smaller—
too small for giants—
so tonight I paint a jewel butterfly.
Compact. Radiant. Intentional.
Still carrying the same truth.
Why not honor transformation?
Why not trust that no stage lasts forever?
If you fix your eyes,
things change.
Butterflies prepare for winter.
They live briefly,
yet leave behind a fragrance of hope—
of resurgence,
of restoration.
And every time I lift the brush,
I hear Papa again—
steady, laughing, prophetic.
He didn’t just teach me how to paint a monarch.
He taught me how to live like one.
⸻
A small coda, like a whisper at the edge of the canvas:
Red wing, born of winter,
fire against the cold,
you taught me how to wait,
how to endure the dark,
how to trust the unfolding.
Papa spoke—
and wings appeared.
