these early days

a list of noticings

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“Look closely. The beautiful may be small.”

-Immanuel Kant

1. We are at the community pool. A child wearing American flag swim trunks runs up to his mom, who is on the phone in the parking lot. He asks if he should reapply sunscreen. After a few minutes of going back and forth over this decision, they conclude that he should. She calmly says she’ll be over to help him in a minute. She smiles as he runs eagerly back to the pool. As soon as he is out of sight, she turns her back to him. Faces her phone. Sobbing.

2. The mountain overlooks my daughter running, tongue out, gleefully after our dog. 

3. We are log rolling on the bed. A new game we learned in our parent/child gymnastics class. As we roll, she smiles, looking deep into my eyes. I wonder if this moment will be lasting in her memory. My laugh singing along with hers. The way my eyes crinkle into the shape of crow’s feet. My auburn hair falling on her cheek as we roll and roll. Back and forth on the bed. 

4. The other morning I took the dog  for a walk at my favorite local preserve. The one where the mountain overlooks the Thistle, Bee Balm and Clover. In the one hour loop, I noticed more than I have in weeks: A Monarch lulls softly on a bed of Milkweed. Red Winged Blackbird perches against the sleeping Goldenrod. An English Sparrow sits on guard above the nest box. I quickly shoo away the story of the male Sparrow and the nest of Swallows my friend Léa shared with grief washing over her face. I ask the world to ensure this is not the case. That this Sparrow is defending his own. That the victory of this home was a bloodless affair. Instead, I choose to focus on the Baltimore Checkerspots. How they are everywhere. A Bumblebee dancing around St. John’s Wort. A Great Blue Heron quietly overlooks the pond. One leg firm on the dead Hickory. Later when I look back at the photos I took, I realize he was there, watching over us. The entire time. 

5. “Lilacs and olives are both permanent anchors of civilization. For both live forever and will remain long after the farms who planted them have died. Olive trees, planted by people whose very languages have disappeared, still cling to crumbling mediterranean terraces. American settlers planted lilacs in front of farmhouse doors not for function, but for beauty, while they struggled to make a new life in the wilderness. Sometimes the slowly cleared fields housed walls that were no more permanent than those who made them but the lilacs remained by the ghost porches leading nowhere.” - 100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names by Diana Wells.

6. Summer sings sweet reminders in tune with the Frog song. 

7. We lay trying to fall asleep in the pitch dark to the sound of summer rain. My daughter is breastfeeding as my blind eyes do their best to adjust to the night. The only light that penetrates the windows is lightning. Striking every five, ten, eight, two, five seconds. It blankets over us like a weighted duvet in the middle of winter.

8. I have been a mother for exactly one year, three months and sixteen days.

9. My husband has taken to calling our daughter various nicknames: Little Steps. Little Hat. Little Stinks. Little Bok Choy. But most often, Baby.

10. There will be a time where I’m at the playground reading, maybe Sheila Heiti’s Motherhood, on a red park bench watching my daughter climb effortlessly on the jungle gym. She will be five. I will be thirty-four, or thirty-five, depending on the month. There will be new sensations of freedom. A new routine. New structure. Maybe I’ll be a published writer. Maybe I’ll still struggle to write a single sentence down on the page. Wherever I may be, I know for sure that I will miss this exact moment. I will dream of going back to where I am. I will yearn to soak up this scent. This interwoven season. These early days.