No one ever told us that they were the caterpillars of moths. We had every reason to believe that the sad, misshapen cocoons behind the glass of our pickle jars would become monarch butterflies one June day, and when that happened, we would have smiles wider than the sky and eyes filled with clouds. Of course it never happened. All of the jars were forgotten, and our smiles became deflated memories, only as wide as the kites we would send up to meet the blue horizon. It wasn’t a big dream, but it meant so much to us. We were young.