Tag Archives: butterflies

Encore Excerpt From ‘The Butterfly Tree’

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here) and orderable at all bookshops.

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A good many readers in response to the column two weeks ago excerpted from my new novel “The Butterfly Tree: An Extraordinary Saga of Seven Generations” asked for more. Who am I to argue with taking the day off? And so, from the opening chapter, an encore:

Ka-BOOM!

Thunder exploded, its volume deafening, its lightning flash brilliant as the Biblical bolt that blinded Saul, shooting down from the heavens with the earthshaking power of a million hatchet blows. The blade of electricity cleaved The Black Walnut Tree as effortlessly as a honed hunting knife slicing a stalk of celery.

A life of 231 years ended in a split-second.

The regal tree was sliced cleanly in two, from leafy crown to grassy ground, the splayed halves as identical as a left and right hand. The newly exposed surfaces seemed as if a master cabinetmaker had spent endless hours sanding, varnishing, buffing.

In death The Black Walnut Tree had been a lifesaver, shielding a clan of Roma migrants from being lanced by the thunderbolt. The ensemble, encamped along the riverbank in March 1852, had sought shelter beneath the tree’s colossus canopy—most importantly, Aisha Beswick, who was in labor with her first child. Huddled alongside Tamás, the expectant father, was Dika, Aisha’s mother and a revered fortuneteller.

Half an hour before the fateful lighting strike, as moody clouds roiled ominously darker, darker, closer, closer, Dika bemoaned, on the edge of weeping: “The peril is great for Aisha and the baby. We must fetch a doctor or they shall both die, this I know.”

Without hesitation, Hanzi volunteered for the emergency errand. The teenager, as if a descendant of the wing-footed Greek messenger god Hermes, raced two miles to town with such swiftness that the falling raindrops seemed to miss him.

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Aisha’s contractions became more frequent, more fierce, more worrisome.

The apocalyptic sky was having its own contractions, three-hundred-million-volt flashes of lightning followed by deafening whipcracks.

“Oh, Lord, please watch over my child,” Dika said softly, head bowed, “and keep safe my precious grandbaby.”

Dika’s prayers seemed suddenly answered with Doc’s hasty arrival, but just as he set down his medical bag—

—Ka-BOOM!

The fateful thunderbolt smote The Black Walnut Tree like a mighty swing of Paul Bunyan’s giant axe. Miraculously, no one was killed by the lightning strike, nor injured by the falling twin timbers. All, however, were dumbstruck with fright.

All, except Doc.

“Gentlemen, I need you to hold a blanket overhead—like a tent,” Doc calmly directed the gathering. “We want to keep our expectant mother here as dry and comfortable as possible.”

As this was being done, Doc removed his raincoat and favorite derby hat, dropped to one knee, went to work.

Another wave of contractions washed over Aisha and she wailed loud as a thunderclap.

“Omen bad,” Dika sobbed, staring at the felled tree halves. “Two sunrises this poor child will not live to see.”

Not a believer in prophecies, Doc was deeply concerned nonetheless. His heart raced like Hanzi’s feet had for this was the first baby—the very first—Dr. Lemuel Jamison would endeavor to deliver all by himself.

Only two weeks earlier, Doc had completed a nine-month obstetrics internship at Cincinnati’s Commercial Hospital that was affiliated with The Medical College of Ohio from which he graduated top of his class.

During his internship, Doc delivered countless babies. Always, however, there had been an experienced obstetrician by his side, ready to help—or take over fully—if things turned dicey.

Things were dicey now.

And about to turn dicier.

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Excerpt from “The Butterfly Tree” by Woody Woodburn, BarkingBoxer Press, all rights reserved, now available at Amazon and other online booksellers, and many bookshops. Woody can be contacted at woodywriter@gmail.com.

Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

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Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Excerpt from ‘The Butterfly Tree’

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here) and orderable at all bookshops.

“Life imitates art,” Oscar Wilde famously asserted and his words proved eerily accurate a month ago when my 97-year-old father, a surgeon turned patient, was battling cancer to the courageous end.

One night, after Pop’s breathing had grown shallower by the day and more and labored by the hour, I read him the excerpt below from my newly released novel “The Butterfly Tree: An Extraordinary Saga of Seven Generations.”

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“What I want you to promise me,” Doc said—breathe—“is that you’ll grieve only one day for me.” Breathe. “After one day, dry your eyes and focus on always remembering our good times together”—breathe—“and never forgetting how much I love you.”

Tears bathed his twin sons’ cheeks.

“There’s something I never told you”—breathe—“and probably should have,” Doc, now 83, continued weakly, pneumonia’s grip growing strong. With effort he proceeded to share the depths of his long-ago widower’s bereavement and suicide attempt, including the exploding ether bottle that awakened him the night his house burned down. “So you see”—breathe—“you boys saved my life.”

“We had no idea,” said Lemuel.

“We’ll still never say who really started that fire,” Jamis said, impishly.

“I have my suspicion,” Doc retorted, winking intimately at Jay-Jay.

Turning serious again: “As I’ve often told you, try to make each day your masterpiece. Breathe. If you’re successful doing that most days, day after day and week after month after year”—breathe—“when you get to the end of your adventure you’ll have lived a masterpiece life. Breathe. I’ve made some flawed brushstrokes, certainly, but all in all, I’m pleased”—breathe—“with my life’s painting. Yes, I feel happy and fulfilled. My only real regret”—breathe—“is that it’s all passed by so swiftly, in a blink it seems. Breathe. I feel like I did when I was a kid on the pony ride at the fair”—breathe—“I want to go around one more time.”

Jamis leaned over and hugged Doc, embracing his Pops longer than he ever had, and still it was far too brief. Lem, lightly stroking Doc’s left arm, suddenly realized the brushstroke-like birthmark resembled Halley’s Comet—The tail of a comet that Grandma warned us would bring tears, he thought.

Doc slept for most of the next two days, awaking only for short spells—including evening shaves from the town barber, Jonny Gold. Breathing became more labored as his failing lungs slowly filled with drowning fluid. During Connie’s illness long before, and again with Alycia’s not so long ago, Doc lovingly told them it was okay to “let go” rather than suffer. But he found it impossible to grant himself similar merciful permission.

Jamis and Lem gave it instead.

“Keep fighting if it’s for you, Pops,” Jamis said, his tone tender as a requiem. “But if you’re doing it for Lem and me, we’ll be okay—go be with Aly and Connie. We love you beyond all measure.”

“We’ll never forget your love,” Lem whispered, his lips brushing his namesake’s ear.

Doc opened his eyes, blue-grey like the ocean on a cloudy day, and with clear recognition grinned fragilely at Jamis, then at Lem, letting them know he heard their lovely words. His eyelids lowered shut as he squeezed his sons’ hands and whistle-hummed, almost inaudibly, before being gently spirited away.

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When I finished reading, and then echoed the twins’ words with my own, my dad opened his ocean-hued eyes, briefly; smiled, faintly; gave my hand a tender squeeze, lengthily; and death imitated art before my next visit the following day.

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            Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Excerpt from “The Butterfly Tree” by Woody Woodburn, BarkingBoxer Press, all rights reserved, now available at Amazon and other online booksellers and many bookshops. Woody can be contacted at woodywriter@gmail.com.

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A Few Of My COVID-19 Butterflies

by Woody

I am guessing that at one time or another, perhaps in a grade-school class or maybe on your own on the windowsill of your childhood kitchen, you placed a caterpillar inside a big jar along with a twig for it to climb on and some leaves or milkweed to eat, and then waited for the magic to happen.

One day, unless you forgot to poke air holes in the jar lid, the caterpillar spun a silky cocoon. Then, inside this protective casing, it wondrously transformed into a chrysalis before emerging as a beautiful butterfly.

It seems to me we have all been like caterpillars this past year, forced inside our stay-and-shelter cocoons. Now, thanks to the scientific magic of vaccines, it is becoming time to safely emerge.

The question is, do we have new wings or are we unchanged caterpillars?

Early on during the coronavirus pandemic, I shared a quote from my hero, John Wooden – “Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things out” – and suggested this piece of wisdom seemed especially pertinent during these trying days and nights.

Fully a year later, I am curious if – and if so, how? – you have made things turn out for the best? Perhaps you became an expert baker or learned a new language or took up painting? Here are a few of my COVID-19 butterflies…

Visiting with loved ones and friends, while wearing facemasks and keeping a safe social distance, has made me appreciate hugs like never before.

Having a long-planned and greatly anticipated anniversary vacation to Italy cancelled gave me a greater appreciation for travelling than the trip itself could have. When we finally leave home for Rome, I believe my wife and I will savor it tenfold.

Although not quite a phobia, I truly do not like going to the grocery store and so discovering home delivery apps has been a godsend and something I will continue to use.

Despite taking no vacations during the pandemic, I did “travel” to The Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Conn., via an online virtual guided tour. Similarly, I re-“visited” The Edgar Allen Poe House and Museum in Baltimore and The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West for special presentations by expert storytellers. These “trips” required no air flights or hotels and were either free or nearly so and I plan to continue searching them out moving forward.

Similarly, I “attended” more than two dozen book talks given around the globe by award-winning authors – including George Saunders, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Anne Lamott and Nikole Hannah Jones – and even asked questions during the Q & A, while sitting on my couch!

I learned that my wife can put up with me 24/7 even after 38 years of marriage.

We have gotten into the habit of visiting with our daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter, and our son and his fiancé, almost daily via Zoom chats.

With Date Nights with my much-better half and Happy Hours with friends and most other social gatherings basically cancelled, it has been like having more hours in the day and even extra days in a month. Thus, things turned out for the best for me with more books read than my usual 52 annual goal – and also in writing a novel manuscript.

Returning to Coach Wooden, as I often do, I believe as the tragic tally of COVID-19 deaths has grown from heartbreaking to mind-numbing and beyond, the pandemic has made my favorite butterfly-beautiful Wooden-ism resonate more powerfully than ever: “Make each day your masterpiece.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Psychedelic Snowfall in Key West

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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Psychedelic Snowfall

in Key West

            In “A Moveable Feast,” a memoir of his halcyon days – and nights – in Paris in the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway wrote of F. Scott Fitzgerald: “His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust of a butterfly’s wings.”

My key reason for traveling to Key West recently was to visit The Hemingway Home & Museum in Old Town. Five minutes away by foot, on the same block as the popular Southernmost Point in the Continental United States, is The Key West Butterfly & Nature Conservatory. Being so near, I decided to see some butterfly wings.

Entering the humid sanctuary with a soaring glass ceiling that seems to touch the clouds was to step into a time machine. Within seconds, I became a 59-year-old kindergartener on his first school field trip.

One of the psychedelic snowflakes in Key West.

“Look!” I reflexively exclaimed to my wife, pointing at a butterfly fluttering a few feet ahead.

“Look! … Look!” I quickly repeated, almost singing, as two more painted marvels danced through the air in slow motion.

Seeing a single butterfly in one’s backyard lightens the heart; here, inside the artificial outdoors, there are more than 3,000 representing 65 species. I had anticipated spotting butterflies would be like an aerial Easter egg hunt requiring eagle eyes and luck. Instead, it was like being in the midst of an NBA championship celebration with confetti – oversized and alive – floating all about.

My reaction to this psychedelic snowfall was as if watching Fourth of July fireworks: “Oooh! … Ahhh! … Wow! … Look at that one!” So unbridled was my childlike delight that I may have half-skipped along the winding pathway.

The climate-controlled paradise boasts beyond butterflies. There are plants and trees enough for a rain forest; a meandering stream with resident turtles; and two gorgeous flamingos, florescent pink as a Key West sunset.

Scarlett, or perhaps Rhett, struts her stuff.

Long-legged Scarlet and Rhett were not always so radiant. After two years of bureaucratic pink tape to secure them, they arrived sickly and gray. Loving care, and importantly a diet rich in brine shrimp containing a natural dye called canthaxanthin, returned the “Gone with the Wind” pair to “flame-colored” per the Portuguese derivation “flamenco.”

Rhett and Scarlet, each 7 years old with life expectancies up to 75, now enjoy the feathered company of 20 other species of exotic birds. All seem to have had their feathers colored in by imaginative children using the 64-count box of Crayola crayons.

Indeed, the fabulous fowls – “Look! … Oooh! … Another one over there!” – come in purples and pinks, reds and oranges, greens and golds, vibrant hues all. I wish you could see them.

And yet it is the butterflies that steal the show. One of the guides called them “flowers of the sky” which I think is perfect. I bet Hemingway would have liked that description, too.

Two especially memorable moments occurred on my breathtaking stroll through this Land of Ahhs. First, a bird of a royal blue variety lighted on my left shoulder and remained perched for what seemed like a minute, although surely it was 10 seconds at most, before flying off.

Shortly thereafter, a “flower of the sky” as luminously turquoise as the local shallow ocean waters, lighted upon my right forearm. With its wings opening and closing ever so slowly for thermal regulation, it rested there for a true minute before bidding me farewell.

On a sheet of paper in a typewriter at Hemingway’s nearby home, a copy of a letter he wrote to a friend begins: “Having a wonderful time!!!”

That aptly describes my visit with the butterflies!!!

To be continued next week.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …