Butterfly

I drove on the same road that I have been driving on for five years now for my job yesterday. Its a really long two lane highway, with a median and two more lanes in the other direction a good distance apart. I love this drive somedays because there are so many trees on either side in front of me for miles and miles. In the winter when the snow starts falling the road looks like a picture out of a Christmas card. In the spring and fall the leaves are a landscape of beautiful colors and a sign of a new season. I started my job the same year that Andrew and I started to think about our future as parents. Five years and however many seasons later, I am still driving on that same road. So it would seem that my life was routine and that road would change with the seasons as I continued to drive on it. Yesterday, as I was driving down the same road, I saw a butterfly approaching my windshield. I was driving around 60mph so it would have passed in seconds, although it seemed like that butterfly was in front of my window much longer. The butterfly was a shade of orange and red with small specks of black in the body of it, and the wings were trimmed with black. As I continued to drive the butterfly continued to fly across my windshield in what seemed like slow motion, and then it flew over. I thought about that butterfly all day. Everyone knows that butterflies are symbols of change but I think its more. I started to think about my life differently this year, that I can change my life. I realized that life would continue to change me unless I took control of my choices and changed it. I felt at times at the mercy of the doctors, and the medicines and the endless appointments, and the superstitious speculations. I drove down that road for five years watching it change me and this year I changed it. The butterfly flew across my windshield and I saw every little detail of it. When Andrew and I became certain that we would adopt, life stopped changing us, and we changed it.