Well. Half of them are Michael’s. But we forgot which ones. This may be important, because last year he named all his butterflies “Junior.” Since these will be “painted lady” butterflies, mine are traditionally (this is our third year, so now it’s a tradition) named after other famous painted ladies: Cathy Ames, Belle Watling, Sydney Barrows, and so on. Even the males. Especially the males.

I keep thinking of our “release party” last year, in the spring of 2020. Michael hadn’t seen his best buddy, Theodore, in months. His family lives only a few houses away, but no one was playing together then. Even playing outside felt too risky. But for this occasion, we invited Theo’s family to come see us release ten butterflies. We all stood scattered across the yard, and I had a long pole so the little ones could see how far “six feet” was. They wanted to get closer to watch the butterflies, but every time one of us moved forward, we had to do all kinds of mental trigonometry to calculate the distance adjustments required by seven people from two households. It. Was. Awful.

(Over the course of the year, we got a better sense of what our risks were (and weren’t) and formed an informal “pod,” without which we all would have lost our damn minds. Leaky but ultimately functional (the pod, not the minds. Okay, maybe those too). None of us got COVID, not even Theodore’s dad, who is a teacher. Knock on wood and all that. And I scored a vax Monday. Whoo! 🥳)

This year, Theodore and his sister have their own cup of caterpillars, and I hope they have more creativity with names than Michael does, because we cannot have ten butterflies named “Junior” on our street. It’s absurd.