A Flutter of Some Butterfly Lingo

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Grant, as you know, my mom was a public school teacher for 25 years in my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

And Louisville’s a city with a long history of racial segregation.

And in 1975, Louisville began court-ordered busing to desegregate the schools.

And this was a really tense time.

So my mom welcomed her new, nervous 7th graders from all over the city with an odd bit of homework.

She said, go out and find me a black and white and yellow caterpillar.

She wanted them to focus on their weird teacher and this unexpected task rather than on themselves and each other.

And sure enough, one of them found a caterpillar and brought it in.

And the kids put it in this big container with a branch of milkweed leaves, which monarch caterpillars like to eat.

And over the next few days, the students watched as it attached to one of those leaves and hung down in that J shape that they do,

And then formed this beautiful blue-green case called a chrysalis.

And inside that case, the caterpillar’s body broke down into a chemical soup, and a few days later, it reformed as a butterfly.

And the kids got to watch it emerge and dry its wings.

And together, when it was ready, they set the butterfly free.

That first homework assignment became a yearly tradition in Room 210.

And the kids learned the words metamorphosis from the Greek for change form.

And they also learned the word chrysalis, which comes from the Greek word for gold.

Because the case of some butterfly chrysalises are gold.

And on a monarch chrysalis, it’s got these gorgeous gold dots.

And the Greek word chrysos, meaning gold, also gives us the word chrysanthemum, which means golden flower.

We lost my mom way too early, almost three decades ago.

But, you know, when I run into her former students, I still hear about those butterflies.

And this is why this week I was over the moon, Grant, to find my first ever monarch caterpillar in the wild.

I was so excited.

Oh, how delightful.

Yeah, after all these years.

And it was so weird because it was actually on the inside of our front door.

And strangely enough, just a few weeks ago, we realized that there’s a milkweed plant right out in the front yard.

I did not know this until recently.

So my wife and I took the caterpillar out and put it on one of the leaves of the milkweed.

And sure enough, the next day, came back, there was this gorgeous chrysalis with the little gold dots.

And so I’m really hoping it survives.

There are a lot of threats out there.

There’s apparently a parasite going around.

But I’m hopeful that we can keep an eye on it and watch its eclosion, which is a word I just learned yesterday.

Eclosion.

It looks like explosion, but it’s eclosion, which means the hatching or emerging from a cocoon.

It comes from the French word for to hatch.

So I’m waiting for eclosion, hoping, crossing my fingers.

That’s amazing.

So monarchs have, if I remember, a three-year cycle.

So your monarch might somehow send monarchs back to you and your plant in a few years,

The grandchildren of the one that you put on the plant.

Oh, I’m hoping so.

I’m hoping so.

That’s amazing.

First it was feral kittens, now it’s feral caterpillars.

Nature finds a way, as the great Jeff Goldblum put it.

Yes, and it teaches us lessons.

It was such a great way to teach kids about the words metamorphosis and chrysalis.

Like I said, I just learned explosion.

Well, she sounds like a great teacher.

She was.

Sounds like a good mother, too.

She was.

She was great.

Martha, thank you for sharing that memory.

And, you know, I know that our listeners have memories because they share them all the time.

What’s your memory of a language thing from someone who meant a lot to you, a teacher or a parent or grandparent to a relative,

Somebody who taught you a thing and it’s just tied so perfectly into your love of language and books and literature and reading and writing?

Just let us know.

We want to hear those stories, 877-929-9673,

Or put in an email to words@waywordradio.org.