It is rewarding to take a walk with my nieces and nephew; 6, 4, and 1. We live in the same neighborhood (and by that I mean directly across the street from one another); I like to include them when I amble around the block these days. Of course, I appreciate the happy company, but there is another reason I take them along: I prefer to stroll with a stroller. My gait is more stable than if I just use my cane. A stroller is like a walker, only better. It’s a walker with a cute baby in the front.
I also invite the kids to tag along for their sakes. Some time ago my mother read that an adult’s most vivid memories usually involve outdoor activities as a child. When she shared this with me, I had to question, why are our most vivid memories of being outside as children? Why will our children feel the same? Senses awaken, I suppose, when children encounter something new. Outdoors, everything is new every day — every minute! Flora flourishes and fades. Temperature climbs and dives. Cars drive here and there. The neighbor who greeted you yesterday is not on her lawn today. The mail in the box is different. Little ones mentally record every scent and sight around them with great interest.
Lily notices her surroundings like an artist would. Perhaps she is collecting ideas for her next sketch. At four years old, she can draw portraits and landscapes with an almost surgical attention to detail. Lace on a tiny dress. Microscopic gears on roller skate wheels. Stems on every apple in a tree. And faces! There are whiskers. Nostrils. Canine teeth and molars. An uvula in the throat.
Today she peers at the pavement as we walk. She slows to study the sky. I am distracted with thoughts about the workweek. I am walking, looking, thinking straight ahead. When I progress a few feet and discover she is not with us, I turn to see her squatting by the curb a few yards away, poking at the dust with a stick.
“Catch up, girlie!” I call.
“I found a pile of worms,” she announces loudly, not lifting her head.
“Show me,” I say, pushing the stroller back to her and bending down to see what she is seeing near the gutter.
There are no worms.
“Oh, that? It’s just a metal chain, Lily. It kinda looks like worms, I guess. Let’s keep going,” I kick the dirt, so she can hear the chink of the chain.
“It looked like worms,” she mutters, still looking back at a nook of the world I never would have seen.
Moments later, a neighborhood friend drives up, rolls down his truck window, and asks how I have been. The children stand beside me, quietly waiting to resume our walk. The neighbor and I talk of New Year’s resolutions, swimming pools, and browning grass while they wait, wait, wait on us.
“Nika!” Lily blurts in an excited voice.
I put my finger up, motioning to her to give me another minute. I continue my smallish talk.
“Nika! Nika!” she says again, pulling the seam of my jeans.
Again, I raise a solemn finger. I am always promising that I will not be like those adults who let children interrupt. Only to myself, I must prove these silly promises. Finally the acquaintance drives his truck away, and I turn to my dear niece to ask, “Now, what was it?”
“I saw a bird with a red wing!”
“Really?! Where?”
“”Right there!” she exclaims, pointing upward with a smile as sweet and clear as the sky above us.
There is no bird.
“Oh, he flied away,” she says. I deeply wish I had skipped the shallow conversation and not the bright wing. I touch her hair, and we walk forward in silence. Again I turn, one eye squinting toward the vaporous sky.
Now I understand why an adult’s most vivid memories are of childhood moments out of doors. In our youth, we were fully present. Every moment registered. Sometimes as adults we are outdoors in body while indoors in spirit. We are mentally in the workplace or thinking of things at home, and we ask children to swallow their wonder and wait, wait, wait on us. Yes, that neighborly chat is important, but other nameless distractions are not, I admit.
Oh please, Children, lend your powers of observation — even meditation — to us. When you draw our eyes to a pebble, to a feather, to a petal, we will let it be time to look at a petal, to think of a petal, to record a petal for our memories. The delicate filaments of nature are there only for a few days, at most. Yes, Little Ones, we invite you to snag our attention like a ruby ring on a sweater, in an immediate way that we cannot ignore, so that when we are old, we will have more than the vapor of an empty sky, more than the lead of a chain.
Today I am thirty-eight. And this year I am giving myself a gift:
Every petal I can find.