My grandmother's apartment sits in the corner of the second floor of our old Toronto house.
Big windows shaded by oak trees surround us.
I've escaped to this retreat since I was a toddler.
It's the place of hugs, cookies, colour TV and cigarette smoke.
When I learned that smoking makes people die faster,
I poked holes in my grandma's menthol cigarettes with a pin,
but she just wrapped tissue around them and happily puffed away.
It's my 10th birthday and grandma's gifts have always been the best.
When I was 7 or 8, she said she'd knit me a sweater using the fur of Spooky,
my long-haired white cat.
I'd say fur from his brushings and she'd spin it into wool.
My mum was disgusted by the idea and grandma and I couldn't follow through with our plan.
I loved monarch butterflies almost as much as I loved my cat.
At the cottage, grandma showed me how to find the yellow, black and white striped caterpillars on milkweed plants.
We watched as they fattened on the plants, then latched themselves upside down,
shed their skins and transformed into beautiful blue-green chrysalises.
Two weeks later, they'd emerge as butterflies, orange and black, with white dots lining their wings.
One year, we left the cottage early and grandma helped me transport a terrarium full of pupating monarchs to the big city
so I could watch them emerge.
They were beautiful monsters, all segmented legs and curling proboscis,
drying their wings before flying off to mate or begin a long migration south.
Inside my 10th birthday package, there's a heavy brown sweater.
I don't really wear brown and sweaters prickle my skin and make me hot.
I give grandma a cheerful thank you and look around for the cake.
When I finally take the time to really look at the sweater, I see it's more than brown.
There's also orange and black and white dots lining the wings of a monarch.
Grandma centred the butterfly's thorax and abdomen, so its long body covers my spine.
So wings wrap protectively around my shoulders and ribs and meat on my chest.
She used soft yarn.
It's polyester, she said, no itching.
I also see she's lined it with a light, smooth fabric to make doubly sure it won't bother my skin.
I don't remember ever having worn the monarch sweater, but I must have.
It looks worn.
These days it's much too small for me and I still don't know if I'd wear it.
It lives in my wardrobe safe from the moths and the years,
emerging every once in a while to remind me of the magic.
And so I can read the tag.
Thank you.
