Rhopaphoria

The painted lady butterfly

Last night there was a steady rain, almost sounded like sleet on the roof, lasting many hours. I always revel in this sound – it’s that sense of feeling cozy and sheltered in a warm house while it storms outside. It’s akin to chrysalism, i.e., “the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.” (Defined in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows).This morning was brightly lit and somewhat breezy. At some point I noticed what I first thought were leaves caught in a current of wind, flecks of bronze and gold flying by my window. I paid them no mind initially, then it came to me, the sleepyhead: this is March. This is not the season of autumn leaves. Perhaps they were sparrows—LBJs (little brown jobs), as a birder friend calls them?

Peering again, I see it’s a stream of butterflies – the ones known as painted ladies. Riding on the gusts like confetti, like petals tossed away from some cosmic bloom, effervescent, glittering and bejeweling the wind. A butterfly migration!

My heart lights up in this sweetest of spring storms.

What name might we give to the caught-in-a-breeze-of-butterflies sensation? I propose a combination of Rhopalocera, the taxonomic division within Lepidoptera designating butterflies, and euphoria: 

Rhopaphoria.