Remembering How to See

Spring is here in my little area of the Midwest. The crunchy brown fields and rheumatoid gray branches are again dotted with green buds and blossom heads. Birds, squirrels and bunnies are scampering, courting, and building nests. Skunks are prowling about at night, making Most Beautiful Dog nutty. The freeze-dried, squeaky smell of winter is giving way to rich scents of earth, moss, worms and rain. And Incrediboy is climbing the walls to go outside at any opportunity.

I can’t say as I blame him – I feel the same way.

We have been spending our evenings outdoors (sans jackets I might add) nearly every day. The Hub has taken Incrediboy across the road and into the farming field to look for interesting items to collect. They bring home to me neat looking rocks and arrowheads and stories of deer hoofprints and coyote tracks and the broken, weathered umbrella now residing in the thicket island. Incrediboy has amassed a nice collection of fieldstones that we keep at the corner of the deck. I too have gone treasure hunting with him - I observe his selection process, and wonder what attracts him to some stones while others are discarded. It’s a joy to watch him discover the world and assess his finds.

Part of country living is sharing the environment with the critters that lived there before you. The other day we found a bug in Incrediboy’s room. It looked like a stinkbug but was painted with bright red blotches – a characteristic I’d never seen on such a bug. The boy was out of his mind with excitement. We took the bug to show Daddy, who was also impressed. We then took the lovely bug outdoors and set it free. We wanted to help Incrediboy understand that the bug needed to be with his family, just as we did. He seemed quite in tune with that idea.

I have begun reloading the birdfeeder with songbird mix and we watch the birds from our front window. Incrediboy likes for me to look up the visitors in our bird guide and wants to learn their names and compare the pictures to what we see in front of us. MBDog is also very interested in the birds. Preferrably with a bit of a l’orange sauce.

The boy is still very much in love with the moon. The other evening the moon was rising across the road and he got very excited about its appearance. He asked to go across the road to the farming field. We walked a good 2 or 3 acres before I suggested we head back.

“But I want to get the moon!”, he says.

He was trying to walk over to the moon. He was sure if we kept going, we’d be able to touch it – maybe even pick it up and bring it home with us.

There is so much in this world we take for granted. I don’t remember what it’s like to think upon such things for the first time and ponder possibilities so out of context from what I know as an adult. There were once days when we would imagine up possibilities for things when we didn’t know the truth about them. There were days we had blind faith in magic and miracles.

Sometimes the teacher becomes the student.

I’m remembering how to see through the eyes of a child.

It’s inexplicably wonderful.