Today's square is different. It is made out of thin tatting thread with a size 13 needle. I made it using the pattern Butterfly Garden by Chris Simon and it doesn't match the other 6 inch squares I plan on making every day this year. But this one has a back story.
When I was about 12 weeks pregnant with our third child we found out she had an extra 18th chromosome. Not good. We were given two options, terminate or carry her. They told us we could lose her at any time. They told us she probably wouldn't make it through labor.
I really thought I knew what I would do. I remember asking how quickly we could schedule the termination even before we got the results back. But when they called and told us that we were having a girl and that she had trisomy 18 my certainty dissipated. Even though I had left the Catholic church many years before Jacinta I still prayed to Mary for a sign. I begged her, mother to mother, to show me a definitive path, to tell me what to do. Then I started seeing butterflies. In retrospect I guess seeing butterflies in spring is not that unusual, but to me, at that time, it felt like those butterflies existed only for me. I started counting them, promising myself that if I counted 18 butterflies in one sitting it would be a sign from God, the universe and everything else that I should carry Jacinta to term.
The most I ever counted were 14 but I wanted her, and I loved her, so we continued on with the pregnancy. When I saw this butterfly pattern I thought to myself, now you can get your 18 butterflies. Thank you, Chris Simon and your sweet little butterfly pattern.
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