The Time-Traveling Butterfly

15 min readMay 9, 2021

“Catching Sunbeams” oil on canvas by Scott Burdick

By the time I reached second grade, Doctor Tachdjian had gradually forced my feet to face the world nearly head-on. My walk became less like a broken robot on the verge of collapse, and more like an extremely uncoordinated puppet on a string. It would take several more years of operations before the last of my invisible strings were severed, which allowed me to assume my divinely ordained role as permanent bench-warmer for all those team sports I’d missed out on for so long.

By the way, the song Puppet on a String was first sung by Sandie Shaw in the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna at the exact moment of my birth in 1967 in Chicago during a freak March blizzard that not a single computer predicted. Coincidence? There’s no such thing.

Sandi Shaw later said this about the song that would rocket her to world-wide stardom: “I was instinctively repelled by its sexist drivel and cuckoo-clock tune.”

I imagine the doctors and nurses has similar misgivings at the sight of me, though my mother reports quite convincingly that she loved me from the first moment she saw me, despite the defective packaging and backward limbs.

All the assorted teachers, nuns, and priests at Saint Celestine attempted a similarly painful straightening procedure on my mind, though the mixed-messaging was a bit confusing at times.

For example, one day in third grade my math and science teacher, Mr. Ryan, told us, “There’s absolutely no place in science for magic.” By which he clearly meant that there was no such thing as magic at all, which was a ridiculous statement given everything else I’d been taught up to that point.

A butterfly named Beatrice that I’d met on the way to school that morning was particularly offended by Mr. Ryan’s irrational anti-magic diatribe. From her perch on my right shoulder, she spoke in her high-pitched lilt. “Ask this magic-denier about the wedding at Cana in the New Testament!”

Since none but me could see or hear Beatrice, I raised my hand.

Mr. Ryan sighed. “What is it this time, Mr. Burdick?”

“Isn’t Jesus turning water into wine proof of magic?”

Mr. Ryan gazed at me as if sensing a trick question that might get him in trouble with the school principle and Father O’Malley. “A miracle isn’t magic, it’s God’s divine will.”

The butterfly’s purple and yellow-spotted wings vibrated indignantly. “Look at him backtracking with his linguistic gymnastics. I bet he’s a secret Deist like Thomas Jefferson.”

Since I had no idea what a Deist was in the third grade, I ignored the comment. “What about Santa? He does all sorts of magic tricks.”

Anna Roberts, the self-proclaimed smartest girl in our class despite her C average, said with her usual know-it-all smugness, “Everyone knows that Santa is a saint, so his magic powers come from God, which means they’re also divine abilities and not in any way magic. Isn’t that right, Mr. Ryan?”

“Um . . . let’s stick to science and math in this classroom and leave questions about Saint Nick to Sister Theresa in your religion class.”

Mr. Ryan resumed his lecture on the basics of something called Evolutionism of Pisces due to Natural Selectivism that someone called Dagwood dreamed up on while riding his pet beagle around the world a hundred years before God invented cars.

Beatrice laughed. “He thinks monkeys can turn into people, but claims there’s no such thing as magic?”

“You transformed from a caterpillar into a butterfly,” I whispered as softly as possible, so as not to draw attention to myself. “If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.”

“That whole chrysalis conspiracy theory is an urban myth,” Beatrice said. “I’ve had wings from the first moment Cthulhu created me in my current form.”

I decided not to argue, since I knew from past experience that butterflies have fragile egos.

After science class, we were turned over to Sister Theresa, one of the last nuns still teaching at the school. My mom said it used to be mostly nuns teaching when she went to Saint Celestine as a kid, so there was some sort of nun shortage going on, possibly because of the increased demand for them to fly in television shows and battle vampires with holy water and pointy wooden crosses in comic books.

I was especially fascinated by the gold ring on Sister Theresa’s wrinkled left hand. This symbolized her “marriage to Christ” as the church calls it.

On the first day of class each year, she’d tell incoming students the romantic story of how she’d fallen in love and taken her final vows on her eighteenth birthday in a group marriage ceremony at Holy Name Cathedral along with several dozen other newly-minted Brides of Christ.

Considering the seven hundred thousand current Catholic nuns in the world — not to mention all the nuns over the many hundreds of years since nuns began marrying Jesus — the Son of God is by far the most prolific polygamist of all time, though I wasn’t sure if there have been many children as a result.

It was only much later when I read the Da Vinci Code that I found out that Jesus had thousands of descendants because of the secret child he had with Mary Magdalene two thousand years ago — which raised the rather disturbing possibility that Sister Theresa might be her own husband’s great-great-granddaughter!

Things really do get confusing the more things I learn, which is a pretty solid argument for banning education altogether, if you want my opinion.

Sister Theresa always encouraged her female students to follow her example and marry her divine husband when they turned eighteen, though I’m not sure if any actually joined her as sister-wives.

“I just love nuns,” Beatrice said from my shoulder. “Imagine the pure goodness it takes to completely dedicate one’s life to educating children and working for the betterment of the world.”

“Sister Theresa taught at Saint Celestine even back when my mother was a student here,” I said.

“Would you like to see what your mother was like twenty years ago when she was the same age you are now?”

“Seriously? You can time travel?”

“Physically traveling through time is impossible because of the butterfly-effect paradox,” she said, “but I can give you a glimpse of what occurred back then.”

“You mean like that ghost in Scrooge?”

Beatrice the butterfly looked extremely offended. “Just because no one but you can see me, doesn’t make me a ghoul!”

“Of course not! You’re way too pretty to be a ghoul,” I said, afraid she’d fly away in a huff before taking me back in time. “I’d be happy to do a drawing of you in exchange for showing me my mother as a kid.”

“I’ve always wanted my portrait done, so it’s a deal,” she said. “Close your eyes for a moment.”

I closed my eyes and felt a sensation like butterflies fluttering in my stomach, though I’m pretty sure they weren’t actual butterflies.

“You can open your eyes now.”

I found myself standing at the back of the classroom. The blackboard, the desks, and just about everything else was so similar that I might have doubted this was twenty years before, except for Sister Theresa looking fifty-pounds lighter and astonishingly beautiful.

In the same desk I’d occupied moments before, sat a brown-haired girl my age. She wore the standard plaid skirt and white blouse uniform girls still wore at the school, and looked a lot like my younger sister, Debbie.

“Is that really my mother?” I whispered.

“Sure is,” Beatrice said. “And you don’t have to whisper, since no one can see you, and neither of us can change a thing that happened back then.”

I walked toward my mother and placed my hand on her left shoulder. It went right through it as if I were a ghost.

“This is really weird,” I said.

The supper-model version of Sister Theresa spoke to the class in her familiar authoritarian tone. “Can anyone tell me what a soul is?”

The kids glanced at one another with blank stares.

“A soul is a special gift from God that makes you human,” the nun said. She strode up to a freckled-faced boy in the front row who was nodding off. “Your physical body is impermanent.” With a raptor-like quickness, she pinched the sleeping boy’s arm. He emitted a high-pitched yelp and jerked upright in his chair, his academic attention fully restored.

“Unlike your body, your soul is immortal,” the nun said. “It’s what animates you and creates your thoughts. It’s also what will go to Heaven or Hell for the rest of eternity depending on how you behave in this world.”

My mother raised a hesitant hand.

“You have a question, Dolores?”

“Does my cat Mittens have a soul?”

“Have you not been paying attention, Ms. Riley?” The nun marched toward her like an angry drill instructor. “Did you not hear me when I said that souls are what make you human?”

“I just thought cats might have a different — .”

“Is your cat human?”

My mother lowered her gaze. “No, Sister Theresa.”

“Only humans have immortal souls, so unlike humans, when animals die, they’re gone forever.”

Several girls in the glass looked stricken at this news.

I looked at Beatrice. “Is it true that you don’t have a soul?”

“Well, Pythagoras was the first to claim that souls are divine in origin, and Thomas Aquinas wrote that only human souls live on after the body dies, but Epicurus believed the body and soul of all living creatures is destroyed at death. Buddhists reject the very concept of an individual self or soul altogether, while many modern cognitive neuroscientists operate under the ontological assumption of physicalism, which claims that the mind is merely a complex machine that animates itself through a chemical and electrical process of — “

“I didn’t ask for a history lesson with all kinds of made-up words I don’t understand,” I said. “All I want to know is whether you believe you have a soul.”

“Well, that’s a much easier question since beliefs don’t have to be based on truth,” Beatrice said. “Even a belief that is demonstrably false may offer an evolutionary advantage from the genetic point of view, which might explain why — ”

“If you don’t want to answer my question, just say so.”

“I forget how intellectually stunted humans are,” she said with a twitterish giggle. “The answer to your simplistic question is that I firmly believe without any doubt that I, and all things in the universe, possess an immortal soul, even rivers and mountains and black holes, though unlike most humans, I’m self-aware enough to admit that my personal beliefs are based on nothing more than wishful thinking on my part and are probably complete nonsense.”

The nun frowned at my mother for a long uncomfortable gaggle of seconds without uttering a word. Finally, she turned, strode back to her desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a piece of construction paper.

“A good number of you submitted drawings to our student art competition,” the nun said, and held up a beautiful pencil drawing of a sleeping cat. “I wanted everyone in class to see this submission by Dolores Riley.”

My mother’s cheeks flushed and she smiled slightly.

The girl sitting at the desk next to hers whispered, “Wow, that came out fantastic, Dolly! You’re going to win for sure.”

“Thanks, Anna,” my mother whispered back.

All the students looked equally impressed.

“Can you draw that good?” Beatrice asked me.

“No,” I admitted in astonishment. “My mom showed me how to use simple shapes to draw more complex things when I was in the hospital as a kid, but I had no idea she could draw cats that good.”

“In all my years as a teacher at this school,” Sister Theresa said, “I have never seen a third grader produce a drawing even close to this quality.”

My mother sat up straighter, the joy reflected in her dark chestnut eyes — which were exactly the same chestnut hue as my own eyes.

Beatrice said, “You must have inherited your artistic talent from your mother.”

With a deliberate slowness, the nun tore the beautiful drawing in half.

My mother’s entire body jolted. Her eyes widened in horror as the nun painstakingly shredded the drawing into smaller and smaller pieces.

“This drawing is so good,” Sister Theresa said, “that it’s quite clear to me that Ms. Riley did not produce this work of art on her own.”

In a quavering voice, my seven-year-old mother said, “I didn’t get help from anyone. I swear I didn’t. Not even my parents.”

“Which of the Ten Commandments forbids lying, class?”

As one, the class spoke. “Commandment Eight. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

The nun tossed the confetti into the trash and glided to my mother’s desk, towering over her with arms crossed. “Do you want to end up in Hell for all of eternity, Ms. Riley?”

My mother’s shoulders shook as she began crying. “I swear I did the drawing all on my own, Sister Theresa. Please belie — ”

“You will have detention after school for the rest of the week where you will consider the fact that when you lie to me, it’s the same as lying to God Himself.”

My mother lowered her head in shame and began full-on sobbing. The rest of the class looked on with expressions of disgust at the liar who had tried to false witness herself into winning the art contest.

Beatrice looked almost as mad as I’ve ever seen a butterfly look. “This nun is nothing like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.”

I wanted to comfort my mother, but knew she wouldn’t be able to hear me since all of this had happed twenty years ago. As she cried, I felt a lump forming in my throat.

Then, a horrible thought popped into my mind. “That drawing was really good,” I said. “Do you think it’s possible that my mother might have . . . cheated?” Guilt at even thinking such a thing about my Mom washed over me. As I saw her crying in the spot I would occupy two decades later, I almost started crying myself.

“I’ll do a quick historical fact-check,” Beatrice said, and then vanished.

“That might work with your parents, young lady,” the nun said, “but if you continue this pathetic charade, you will earn yourself a three-day suspension.”

With a super-human effort, my mother forced down her tears, sat up, and stared forward like an automaton who’s been put into standby mode.

“That’s better,” the Nun said.

Beatrice reappeared on my shoulder. “Your mother did the drawing entirely on her own. Only her model, Mittens, saw it before she turned it in for the contest, though the cat mumbled something about having a cousin who could do much better.”

I looked at my mother’s desolate eyes. All the creative passion of the moment before had vanished from them.

“Are you paying attention, Mr. Burdick?”

I swiveled around and saw the young Sister Theresa staring directly at me!

“That’s impossible,” Beatrice said, her wings twitching nervously. “Or have we actually time traveled? That could be really, really bad.”

I was so stunned, that I didn’t know what to say. What if I was stranded back in time? Would I have to move into my grandparent’s house and go to third grade with my own mother? Would she even believe me if I told her I was her son?

“Are you daydreaming in class again?” The young nun grabbed hold of my shoulders and shook me.

I opened my eyes and was back at my desk. Sister Theresa let go of my shoulders and straightened. She was her normal old-woman self again. “What have I told you about daydreaming in class, Mr. Burdick?”

Had my vision of my mother been nothing but a dream?

“Better think quick,” Beatrice said, but offered nothing specific.

Something that had been bothering me magically popped into my mind. “I — uh — had a question about what you said about animals having no soul.”

“I don’t remember covering that topic in this class yet,” she said, “but what’s your question?”

“Mr. Ryan told us that humans came from a common ancestor with apes.”

“Vatican II has affirmed that the theory of Darwinian Evolution is not incompatible with the Bible. Six days for God might be the equivalent of hundreds of millions of years from a human perspective, and the Garden of Eden can be interpreted as a metaphorical account of the moment that God inserted an immortal soul into the first two humans, which we call Adam and Eve.”

“But if we evolved from animals without souls,” I asked, “doesn’t that mean that at some point a human mother and father without a soul had a human baby that suddenly had a soul?”

“I suppose that must be the case,” she said.

“Did God tell Adam and Eve that their parents would be erased from existence when they died? Or did they only learn they’d never see their parents again for all of eternity once they reached Heaven and found it empty?”

The nun’s brow furrowed. Then she shook her head as if clearing it. “Mr. Burdick, there are some mysteries that only God knows the answer to. Just put your faith in God and trust that he has a reason for everything he does.”

“Could I ask you just one more question,” I blurted out.

“What is it now?” she said, her face darkening.

“When my mother was your student, did you tear up a drawing she did of a cat?”

The nun looked puzzled, then a light of understanding ignited in her Irish-blue eyes. “You’re Dolores Riley’s son?”

“Yes, Sister.”

“She told you about that, did she?”

“Well, not exactly, but did it happen?”

“Your mother was caught cheating in an attempt to win the student art completion, but she learned a valuable lesson from that experience.”

“Yeah,” Beatrice said. “She learned that nuns are terrible truth detectors!”

“That reminds me,” sister Theresa said. “Didn’t you mention that you wanted to enter this year’s art completion? Today’s the deadline, you know.”

“I almost forgot!” I reached for my bookbag with the drawing I’d slaved over for the past week. It was of Doug, the baby Dragon that had hatched in our basement from an egg the size of a football. Since I was the only one that could see or hear him, I kept his presence to myself for fear that my parents might object to a baby dragon living in the basement.

I’d been surprised at how well the drawing turned out — though it wasn’t nearly as good as my mother’s drawing of Mittens.

Beatrice said, “You’re not seriously going to hand over your drawing to this crazed art vandal, are you?”

I hesitated, imagining Sister Theresa tearing up my drawing of Doug up in front of the class and denouncing me as an art-cheat.

“On second thought, maybe I’ll wait until next year when I do something better.”

The nun shrugged and returned to the blackboard where she’d drawn a triangle illustrating the three-in-one concept of the Trinity.

“That confirms it wasn’t a dream,” I whispered to Beatrice. “This time travel trick of yours is amazing! I wonder if you could take me back three weeks ago to see who stole my bicycle from our garage?”

When there was no reply, I glanced all around. Beatrice the butterfly had vanished. She hadn’t even given me a chance to draw her portrait as a thank-you!

After my Mom picked me up from school, I asked her about the cat drawing incident and she confirmed everything I’d seen. She assumed one of my uncles had told me about it since they’d been a couple years ahead of her at Saint Celestine and heard the story just like everyone other student and teacher at the school.

“You stopped drawing because of that?” I asked.

She shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal, though I couldn’t get the memory of her sobbing out of my head.

“Once everyone thought of me as an art-cheat, I figured no matter how good a drawing I did, everyone would assume I was lying about doing it myself.”

“So, you just gave up art?”

“Art is not limited to drawing,” she said. “I channeled my creative energy into gardening with my father, flower arranging for weddings, and then got a job in high school at a bakery where I decorated all their cakes with my own designs. That’s where I met your father and we decided to get married as soon as we graduated so we could start a family. When I saw how excited you were about drawing, I was determined to give you the encouragement I never had.”

“If Sister Theresa hadn’t torn up your drawing, you might have kept drawing and gotten a scholarship to Art School rather than taking that job at the bakery and never met Dad, and I wouldn’t have been born at all.”

“They call that the Butterfly Effect,” she said.

I remembered Beatrice saying the Butterfly Effect was why time travel was impossible because it would create a paradox that would be really, really bad.

“So, I should thank Sister Theresa for tearing up your drawing and calling you a cheater?”

“I’m not sure I’d go that far, but the thing to remember is that Sister Theresa honestly thought she was helping me become a better person, so her intentions were good, even though her facts were wrong. Even things that seem horrible can sometimes have unintended good side effects.”

“Like how spending so much time in hospitals got me to practice drawing more than I would have otherwise?”

“Life is what you choose to make of it, despite your circumstance.”

I threw myself into my mother’s arms and hugged her. “Thank you, Mom. I love you so much!”

She kissed my forehead. “I love you too, sweetie.”

I looked up into her chestnut eyes with relief flooding through me. “I’m so glad you weren’t born without a soul.”

She laughed. “That certainly was fortunate.”

“Mom, can you show me how to draw an extremely intelligent butterfly with purple wings and yellow spots?”

“Of course I can,” she said.