Verified by 
Key points
- Some families cannot avoid frequent quarreling and are left feeling anxious and despairing.
- Constant squabbling can be a family's style of engagement, which may be irritating but not deeply significant.
- Try to ignore the superficial tensions of daily life to focus on what you actually do for one another.
My parents, like the monarch butterflies, wintered in Mexico. They fled icy Manhattan for Ajijic, a small lake-side village outside Guadalajara with a big ex-pat community and cheap golf. My husband and I, travel enthusiasts, loved that our kids’ annual holiday with their grandparents entailed a border crossing. But the visit was never easy; in fact, hanging around my parents’ lovely house was more than any of us could bear.
As a result, the yearly attempt at connectedness in the sun always included a major excursion—a vacation from the vacation—like one year’s escape to the remote sanctuary where the butterflies winter over. The idea for the outing came from my father. “It sounds just crazy enough for you two,” was how he put it.
None of us was easygoing, and the tensions when we came together made the expression “nuclear family” seem like a pun. The children—Jared and his older sister, Zoë—had been warring since they could walk. My psychiatrist husband, Michael, often tuned out when the going got rough. And my parents, Edna and Leo, with 50 years of marital combat under their belts, were pushed over the edge by our laid-back parenting.
I, the superglue that should have held us all together, came unstuck after the first few hours. Constant motion was our only hope. The trip to the butterfly winter roost sounded arduous, but if the insects could do it on their tiny wings, we ought to be able to motor our way there.
The monarchs' story
The monarchs' migration began in ancient times when milkweed, the caterpillars' food source, moved north from the tropics to North America. The butterflies followed but couldn’t survive the cold, and so returned each winter. Most monarchs live for only three to four weeks, the females depositing their eggs on the milkweed leaves before dying.
The monarchs born in August are different. They must carry the genetic torch all the way to Mexico and back—2,500 miles for some. They make the trip windsurfing in great swarms. Refueling near the Gulf, they arrive in their winter, having sufficiently fattened to hibernate for the next five months.
In the spring, the butterflies rush north again, many getting only to the Gulf states, where they copulate in a frenzy, lay their eggs, and die. Unlike their grandparents and parents, they will have lived for nine months. The next three or four generations of short-lived butterflies, following the blooming milkweed, work their way north, embellishing our gardens with their vivid fluttering.
Our story
Compared to the monarchs' journey, my family’s excursion may have been trifling, but we experienced it as anything but. It started with a nerve-racking, five-hour drive to Morelia, Michael’s driving too fast for my parents, who took it personally, and Jared speaking only in ob (as in, “dobo yobou spobeak obob?”) for several hours, until Zoë clobbered him, and my father cheered.
Edna and Leo’s hotel room was unsatisfactory, and many heated discussions and much luggage-carting were required before acceptable accommodations were located. At dinner, Michael, a serious foodie, complained about the meal though my parents were paying the bill, while our irritable children, 9 and 10 and old enough to know better, failed to sit quietly and eat without using their fingers. After a row in the children’s room over who would sleep in which of two identical beds, a suspension of hostilities was declared for the night. The next morning, we drove in exhausted silence for three hours to the mountain outpost at the end of the paved road and parked.
For the climb to the butterfly sanctuary, we transferred to local transport: an open truck with a few thin sandbags for seating. The driver found room for my parents in the cab. It was a long two hours for the rest of us, who had to clutch each other to avoid sliding out onto the road. Arriving crumpled and crabby, we saw the first butterflies fluttering in the thin air.
The bugs and us
With each step up the mountain path, the number of butterflies increased. A few individuals quickly became a gentle flurry and then almost a blizzard. After 30 feet of climbing, my parents had had enough.
“OK. We’ve seen the butterflies, thousands maybe. You go on ahead. Leave us here. Don’t worry about us.”
The 9,000-foot altitude had my mother gasping.
“How many octogenarians do they lose here each year?” my father quipped. “They must drop like flies.” In fact, many of the butterflies didn’t make it either, and the ground was littered with their flamboyant remains.
Panting dramatically, Jared and Zoë tried their best to join the quitters. “We’ve seen enough butterflies. This is stupid!” Forced-marching on, we reached the crest and found ourselves all alone in a ghostly stand of tall firs.
At first, we didn’t realize what we were seeing. Millions of butterflies hung immobile, their wings folded, their undersides revealed. They had ascended to the perfect spot: warm enough to sustain life, cool enough to discourage movement, moist enough to keep their delicate wings from drying out. Here they would rest until the warm spring currents spurred them off on their great race north to the blooming milkweed and their moment to reproduce.
“Awesome!” said our children, for once using the word where its full meaning applied. “Now, can we go home?” It was an astonishing sight, although it was the facts that impress me most. Not only do these insects find their way to this tiny mountain grove, but they are led only by the directions in the circuitry of their pinhead-sized brains.
The monarchs we saw were the great-great-grandparents of the next generation that would attempt the journey. One generation of butterflies never meets another, and all the information required for life is passed genetically. Butterflies are free: free from arguments about whether the grandchildren are being allowed to run amuck and from the gnawing anxiety that the grandparents might be right. Butterflies cannot fail to give their children exactly what they need.
In time, my memory of the long, bumpy ride back dimmed, along with the bitter argument about who had kept whom waiting. Slowly, the meaner details sifted down. Floating to the surface was the image of old people and young people wending their way to a far-off sanctuary where homage was paid to life’s compelling regeneration.
