What do monarch butterflies represent to the narrator in the novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous?

The monarch butterflies whose migration the narrator tracks down the coast, symbolize the ever-shifting nature of life and time. Throughout the novel, the narrator uses the butterflies as a means of understanding his own familial evolution. He likens the monarch colony's patterns to his changing relationship to his mother, grandmother, and perception of himself both with and apart from them. In particular, the monarch's timed movements south seem to parallel the narrator's movements between past and present.