As Steve and I walked through a wooded area this past Sunday, something rustled the dried leaves at my feet. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move. A pale shape. Small. I followed. Soon I found myself kneeling in the mud inching closer to this little fellow, whose photo I took for a friend who loves frogs.
That same day, at an adjacent park, we walked around a pond and through the neighboring woods. In the middle of a bustling town the park was well-visited by local families. So, the animals were quite used to people. We walked through flocks of geese. Mallards looked up at us wondering if we had a treat. A chorus of gray squirrels chided Steve for not bringing them nuts. He promised to do so next time. But up high in a tree, more reluctant to be seen, sat a black squirrel.
Around grassy knolls we continued to walk. Then up a hill, past a little fort. Tucked here and there, in open spaces and sometimes beneath the largest trees, sat families. Some picnicked. I saw one man teaching his young daughter how to draw. Her little boy threw rocks into the pond and up high into the trees. I wonder if he noticed the beauty that lay at his feet?
The park was not large. And, truth be told, there were not that many trees, especially around the pond. Yet somehow, because it stood so still upon a dead branch, a great blue heron remained mostly obscured. Even as Steve and I stood there and stared at its quiet beauty, other people walked past us and muttered, “I wonder what they see?”
… and the unexpected reflections in the slower moving pools.
In the end, we did not do the whole trail. The sun was soon to set. We took the “emergency exit” located midway along the path.
Around Christmas, my mother used to invite the gentleman across the street over for dinner. We called him Mr. Joe Boy. He was mentally challenged but living independently with the support of family. My mom would assemble a plate of food so that he could eat in the living room, and the rest of us could hang out in the kitchen. She then left Joe Boy to my dad. My dad was more a people-person than my mom. He would make small talk with Joe Boy. The two of them would watch westerns or whatever was on television. Sometimes Joe Boy would nod off in his chair and we kids would sigh wondering when he was going home. My mother would frown at us but we knew she was thinking the same thing. Eventually my dad would nudge him awake and see him to the door. Over many Christmas holidays that same act would be repeated. Not because this man was starving for food or asking for anything. We did it because my mom felt it was the right thing to do, to be neighborly to this man who spent most of his time alone. It is a trait that I admire in Steve who practices a similar ethos around food and dining. Food is on my mind today because I finally stopped turning away from the pictures coming out of Somalia and East Africa. Most disturbing are the pictures of the skeletal children.
