We have let Roger
share our enjoyment of things people ordinarily deny children because they are
inconvenient, interfering with bedtime, or involving wet clothing that has to
be changed or mud that has to be cleaned off the rug. We have let him join us
in the dark living room before the big picture window to watch the full moon
riding lower and lower toward the far shore of the bay, setting all the water
ablaze with silver flames and finding a thousand diamonds in the rocks on the
shore as the light strikes the flakes of mica embedded in them. I think we have
felt that the memory of such a scene, photographed year after year by his
child’s mind, would mean more to him in manhood than the sleep he was losing.
He told me it would, in his own way, when we had a full moon the night after
his arrival last summer. He sat quietly on my lap for some time, watching the
moon and the water and all the night sky, and then he whispered, “I’m glad we
came.”
For the past couple of weeks, as I have taken my children
on small excursions around town to enjoy the warm weather, I have been thinking
about the importance of exposing them, in every season, to the natural world. I
have been thinking about the importance of returning, year after year, to see
the blooming magnolia tree on our street, to look at the greening trees at
Elizabeth Park, to search for wildflowers in the woods at Westmoor Park. Like
Carson, I believe that such scenes, photographed year after year by my children’s
minds, will mean more to them in adulthood than many other things I could give
them.
One summer evening when my daughter was three, a
vibrant watercolor rainbow spread across the sky right before sunset. I had just put my
daughter to bed, but without hesitation I rushed into the house, pulled her
from her bed, and carried her outside in her pajamas to see the rainbow. She
still remembers being held in her mother’s arms while looking at a rainbow. She
will likely remember it for the rest of her life. What better gift could I
leave her with? It’s worth it.
And now, my son notices the starbusts of the forsythias glowing in yards across town, the coral blossoms of the Japanese flowering quince in our front yard. “Mom, I just found another sign of spring,” he tells
me, again and again, pointing at his strawberry plants awakening from winter dormancy, at the dandelions studding our lawn. “Everywhere I look, I see signs of spring.”
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