Once we arrived home, I called in two of our neighbors as witnesses. Liz said that the butterfly was trying to tell me to stop working late and to “pay attention to what’s really important in life.” Gina pronounced the butterfly a reincarnation⁸.

I thought that was the end of it. But when I returned home the following day, Muriel exclaimed⁹, “He’s back!”

She had spotted the insect among the cascading leaves of our cherry tree¹⁰. For more than a month, the butterfly—that I now called Poppy—appeared whenever I returned home before dark, making 25 visits altogether, and often landing on me.¹¹Other red admirals quickly joined Poppy in our garden. I had never seen this species before. Now they seemed to be everywhere.

I consulted Bob Robbins, curator¹² of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) for the Smithsonian Institution. He suggested that Poppy might have been attracted to my sweat and found that I was a good perch from which to look for female butterflies.¹³

But Mr. Robbins also found it odd that for more than a month this particular butterfly had visited me almost every evening.

For the next two summers I waited in vain¹⁴for more visits. Then on July 4, 2010, during the celebration of my mother-in-law’s birthday, two red admirals appeared in her garden in St. Paul, Minn¹⁵. They landed on my shoulders. We took pictures.

After Muriel and I returned home, she spotted another butterfly above our roof. His landings continued well into August.

Then on Aug. 16 last year, a butterfly made the most auspicious¹⁶ arrival of all. Two days before our daughter’s wedding in Purchase, N.Y., Muriel told me that two red admirals were hovering¹⁷over our parked car.

The day before the wedding, I sat near the car where my wife had seen the butterflies. One red admiral landed in front of me and opened and closed its wings for about 10 minutes.

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8. reincarnation: 轉(zhuǎn)世，再生。

9. exclaim: 呼喊，驚叫。

10. 她在我們那棵櫻桃樹紛紛落下的樹葉中發(fā)現(xiàn)了那只蝴蝶。cascading: 如瀑布般落下的。

11. 在一個多月的時間里，每次夜幕降臨我回到家時，這只蝴蝶——現(xiàn)在我叫它波比——總會出現(xiàn)，前后總共造訪我家25次，經(jīng)常落在我身上。

12. curator: 管理人，負責人。

13.他說，波比很可能是受到我身上汗味的吸引，發(fā)現(xiàn)那是一處尋覓雌蝴蝶的好地方。perch: 棲息處，棲枝。

14. in vain: 白費地，徒勞地。

15. Minn: “Minnesota”的縮寫，美國明尼蘇達州。

16. 然后在去年8月16日，一只蝴蝶的到訪帶來了最為吉利的征兆。auspicious: 吉利的，吉兆的。

17. hover: 盤旋，徘徊。