A few days ago, Liam and I took Lily (our dog) for a walk in the afternoon. Â I was wearing Liam on my chest. Â It was our first afternoon (instead of morning nap time) walk in a long time, so it was the first time in a while that Liam was significantly awake on a walk. Â I was trying to wrangle Lily and obsessing over some minor detail of life, when I realized that Liam had tipped his head back so that he could look straight up at the trees.
Do you wear glasses or contacts? I remember when I first got glasses, in the fourth grade. Â After I put them on, I couldn’t believe the clarity I had been missing in life, all around me. Â I remember thinking, The trees have such gorgeous individual leaves! Â On the way home, I believe I read every billboard aloud to my mother, simply because I could read them.
That was Liam on our walk. Â I think for the first time on a walk, he was both old enough, and awake enough, to be able to look around and see things clearly. Â As we continued our walk, he would look up, and then crane his neck to the right, and then to the left. The fall leaves! The bare branches! A flock of birds! Occasionally, he would stop looking around, look into my eyes instead, and give me a huge gummy grin.
In response, I got out of my own head and looked around. Â Liam had chosen a great day to be awake. Â The trees were absolutely on fire with their fall foliage. Â It’s one of my favorite times of year, and I had been missing it until my baby boy reminded me to just pay attention.
3 responses so far ↓
1 pdw // Nov 27, 2012 at 1:57 pm
I remember when I got glasses, grade 2, and being amazed to discover that everything had edges. Not just this fuzzy blur between one object and another, but everything had such – clear – edges!
2 terri // Nov 28, 2012 at 1:14 pm
<3
3 sally // Dec 1, 2012 at 12:13 pm
PDW–Yes! Exactly!
<3 back atcha, Terri.
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