Gente que Cuenta

The butterfly,
by Leonor Henríquez

arbol de mariposas Atril press
“for a very modest price, I bought fourteen wooden butterflies…”

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      Pablo Picasso once said: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

I remembered this phrase in connection with an activity we did as a family this New Year’s Eve.

The butterfly landed on me with its transformative magic.

They found me at the Dollarama store and excuse me for the prosaic start. There, for a very modest price, I bought fourteen wooden butterflies.

Minutes before receiving the new year, I explained to the multi-generational group the activity in question. We would sit down to decorate the butterflies with our colorful wishes for 2025.

That is when the metamorphosis occurred. For a few moments we were children again. We looked like a kindergarten classroom.

Each one concentrated on their wishes and their butterflies, interrupted only by a “Pass me the green color” or “Who has the orange one?”

For a few minutes that seemed eternal, all those present became artists. Each one with their own different perspective, with their own unquestionable talent.

The second phase of the activity took place yesterday.

Since butterflies are ecological, we set out to find a sad tree to brighten it up. It was my granddaughter Natalia’s idea. The difficult thing is that in winter all the trees look a little sad, but we found one with a twisted trunk, which needed some joy.

There, at its feet, we left our colorful butterflies full of good wishes. I don’t know if trees smile, but this one shone, just like us, eternal children and artists.

Any resemblance to happiness is not pure coincidence.

www.atril .press Leonor Henríquez e1670869356570

Leonor Henríquez (Caracas, Venezuela) Civil Engineer by training (UCAB 1985), writer and apprentice poet by vocation. From her time in engineering emerged her Office Stories (1997), another way of seeing the corporate world. Her latest publications include reflections on grief, Hopecrumbs (2020) (www.hopecrumbs.com) and “The Adventures of Chispita” (2021) (www.chispita.ca) an allegory of life inside Mom’s belly.
Today she shares her “impulsive meditations” from Calgary, Canada, where she lives.
leonorcanada@gmail.com

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