Beautiful Common Things
Red admirals, focus and overlooked firsts.
For the last two years, I’ve been slowly transforming my 20 years of front yard weeds into a California native landscape and the wildlife has noticed. I already have 20 monarch caterpillars chowing their way through the newly emerged milkweed. Last year, I didn’t have any caterpillars from this first wave of migrants, but I guess I’m on the magical monarch map now. I’ll add to my milkweed patch to keep up with Lepidopteran tourist demand and be happy to see them, but my spark of new amazement is over. My first foray into opening my home as a caterpillar nursery was a handful of wonderfully awe-filled firsts for me, but those are over. Things only happen the first time once.
So, I was excited to see a butterfly I didn’t have a mental ID for last week. It reminded me of painted lady, and I wondered if it was in the Vanessa butterfly family too. I’d never had my attention grabbed by Mars-red wing bands before and I admired the simplicity of the tasteful dark suit accented with white. It really was a lovely butterfly and when I focused on the underside of its wings with my camera lens, I had the urge to get out my pencils and contemplate their complicated design. It had to be rare!
When I ran inside with my camera to check the photos against the Internet, I easily discovered it was a red admiral. I then read that it was easily discovered by everyone else as well. The red admiral is, in fact, in the Vanessa family and one of the most common butterflies in the world, found in the temperate regions of North Africa, North and Central America, Europe, Asia, Hawaii, and the Caribbean. How in the world had I never seen one before?
Still, lifers like the red admiral make most of us happy because they are our first experience with a species and that comes with a shot of adrenaline and a touch of awe. We don’t take novel things for granted, instead we create immersive experiences around them, looking closer, being more mindful, and cataloging the moment. We focus.
Sometimes when I’m feeling melancholy, I start to make a list of my favorite first-experiences in my head. There are so many well-worn memories that are favorites like the first time I caught a sparrow with a box, a stick and some string as a kid, and the first time I drove a car as a teenager. Then there is the first time I went to a falconry meet and the first time I was up close with an echidna. (I was hunting with an Australian brown goshawk, and it was in her feet long enough for her to look down and change her mind.) This exercise is a perfect fit for melancholy because it brings me joy but it also makes me lament that firsts are only once and that perhaps I’m getting too old to have many more of them.
Yet, I had never seen a red admiral before. So what other common beautiful things are waiting right outside my door to be a first? These days I suspect, there are more than I could discover in a lifetime. In fact, I’m going to start unintentionally stumbling on them often thanks to menopause.
I have fought tooth and nail the last few years to cling desperately to what has been left of my talent for multitasking. American women take great pride in our ability to multitask while never missing a step and I probably pride myself more than most. Then I started not only missing steps but falling flat on my face trying to skip back and forth between tasks. There are many studies asserting that most women experience cognitive decline during perimenopause, and we all experience our short-term memories declining as we get older. I was about to resign myself to being lesser for my inability to multitask, when I read something in The Upgrade by Louann Brizendine that made this shortcoming into a superpower.
In our 50s and beyond, as hormones wane, women feel less of a biological need to care for everyone else before we care for ourselves. We get more direct with others as the biological need to keep the peace wanes, and the anxiety attached to the need to fulfill our role in society dissipates. When your brain is no longer flitting through all the demands of a young estrogen-filled life, you suddenly have the ability to really focus and without mental distraction.
So, I’ve been weaning myself off my addiction to multi-tasking and have started to give my full attention and concentration to whatever is in front of me. It turns out I can get just as much done this way and whatever I’m working on is better for it. And I had only considered this difference and its benefits is terms of my work life - until I met the red admiral.
Why had I never seen an incredibly common red admiral before? I hadn’t seen it before because I was always mentally hopscotching to next tasks even as I was taking a break. However, I’m doing less and less of that. So, when I took a vitamin nature break in my front yard last week, nature had my full attention. She rewarded me with a butterfly. Now I’m wondering what other rewards there might be.
What other overlooked wonders as common as a dashing international butterfly might I discover? What might everyone else discover whether male or female, young or old? What if we all took a break from mental multi-tasking and focused just for a bit? I don’t know what we’ll discover, but I can’t wait to find out.
I don’t remember ever seeing one either??