Adventures Abroad: Aquatic Butterflies

People who know me know I've been home for a couple of days now. I've visited family and friends for the holidays. My parents have posted about me being back. I've been silent. Silent is not something anyone who's ever known me has associated me with. Rightly so. Silent is not me, but since returning I've found myself at a loss for words.

Right now, I feel stuck. Usually, writing is what unsticks me, but for the better part of two days I have been staring at my journal feeling at a loss. I have always felt things intensely, and yet I'm not sure I've ever felt anything quite this intensely. Leaving C-283 and the Cramer felt like leaving home, but without the easy guarantee that my family would stay in one place that I can come back to at any time.

I'm overwhelmed by this, and I'm not sure how long I'll stay overwhelmed. I'm not sure how many days it will take of staring at my journal, starting a sentence, stopping, only to feel too full of something I don't know how to put words to and trying again to get it out before the words will come. So for now, I'm going to borrow some old words and hope they fill the space.

Every day on the Cramer, we had class on the quarterdeck. The quarterdeck is the raised deck on the very back of the ship where the helm sits. Class consisted of three reports from the students and a main event or two from our professors and professional crew members. Our steward, Ger, gave galley reports that were popular with the students. The three standard reports were the Science, Nav, and Weather Reports. Closer to the end of the trip, I did a mock science report with approval from our science professor, Jeff. Behold, the Lifecycle of the Mermaid!

As you can see, I couldn't quite get through the parody presentation with a straight face. According to the class's local fiction writer, mermaids begin their life as eggs. These eggs are attached to Sargassum, because Jeff has a special affinity for that particular ocean plant. Next they are butterfly-like creatures which can be determined from a normal butterfly by the small scale patterns seen on the wings. From there, they transition naturally into a type of zooplankton we caught in or nets commonly referred to as sea butterflies. Then they move into a small juvenile stage, and finally adults. There are three species of mermaids which become identifiable in their adult stages, likely correlating to the three different known species of Sargassum.

I wish I were creative enough that this came out of thin air, but it was inspired by something we saw on the trip. When we were on Barbuda, yellow butterflies constantly fluttered around our ship. When we lifted anchor, they followed us our into the deep water. I asked Jeff if they were a species of aquatic butterflies. I had never heard of such a thing, but I had already seen so many wonders on this trip. Why not add butterflies native to the sea to the list? At first, Jeff explained that they were not aquatic and had likely been blown out over the ocean by the wind. Then, Jeff decided to humor me and acknowledged them as mermaid larvae. This conversation would eventually lead to my "science" report.

Something about those butterflies spoke to me, though it took me a while to figure it out. I probably spent hours watching them dance perilously just above the waves. They shouldn't have been there. The ocean is not an environment they are equipped for, jokes about mermaid life cycles aside. But they were so beautiful, so mesmerizing, so important out there on the sea. If nothing else, they were important to me. It took a wave of emotion to make me work out why they mattered. When I finally did, this poem was born:

Aquatic Butterflies

I think I know what it means to be an aquatic butterfly,

to soar out over great waves to an even greater unknown,

to soar where you know you don't belong

and have others wonder why you're there.

I think I know what it means to be an aquatic butterfly,

to soar out where your wings shouldn't work,

weighed down as they are by water and salt,

and soar higher than you ever did where you were supposed to belong

because the act of defiance makes you feel so much more alive.

I know what it means to be an aquatic butterfly

and find yourself surrounded by other aquatic butterflies

soaring higher than you could before, because you are together,

and learning you were mermaids all along.

Those butterflies were the embodiment of everything I was feeling at the time. I wonder if any of them ever made it back to land. I wonder if they wished they hadn't. Did they figure out the transition? Did land ever feel right again? Could their wings lift as high or take them as far without the water and salt?

Maybe it doesn't matter how the butterflies did later. Maybe it only matters that they were there in the first place. Their fate, good or bad, does not determine mine. Something pulses inside of me now, real and alive, something that heard the call of the sea and answered, something that has to find a way back some day. Even more important than that, there is a connection between all of us. A tangible place to go back to does not make or break a family. We will always have places to go back to: the places where we live in each other's hearts. I'm glad I made it back to land, where my first family lives, in time for Christmas and my older brother's birthday. I'm glad to share this with them to the degree I'm able. And I'm glad to know that from now on, wherever we go in life, my sea family goes together, even if some of the time the going is only figurative.