trip to the zoo with a two

A trip to the zoo is so much fun with a two, if you have never had the pleasure of doing it than borrow a willing toddler (with parental permission) and head out to your nearest animal park. The key to having fun with a toddler is follow, follow, follow! All too often I see parents and caregivers rushing children on to the next animal, "Come on honey, it's time to see the zebra. Hurry along", in some frantic pursuit for more. Why? Who needs to see all the animals in one day? Bodhi will occasionally spend two hours visiting three animals. We always begin with the lion. Bodhi becomes stock-still staring at his regal friend and peppering his observation with "OOOOOH, OOOOOOH, look at that Mommy", in response to something unexpected.

Next, our beloved elephants, with faces lined by wisdom and a movement that suggests a "no hurry" attitude that appeals to the toddler and busy mother, both.

Finally, we wind our way to the penguins. This is generally a 45 minute visit. Bodhi watches, laughing wildly, as the tentative swimmers line the rock lip overlooking the water. They bob and lean, they rock and suggest an impending leap, then lean back again and preen. Bodhi loves this, almost as much as the wild freedom of a swimming penguin.

On our way out, we may glimpse an animal to explore another day.

On the way home, we both feel so happy inside, so peaceful... like we made a few good friends and weren't in any rush to do so.

Comments

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much. It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall. The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep. But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy. I am a woman who loves the spring. I nearly live for it. When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis. I gorge. This year has been hard. Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally. The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment. It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float. It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within. It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains. Eyes closed. Eyes opened. A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being. It takes courage.

the way of the sunflower

A few weeks ago, I sat holding a sunflower seed in my hand, just prior to the mouth popping, mastication phase, when it's perfect elegance floored me. I stared in awe at the tiny seed nestled in my palm and saw it, in all of it's possibility, for the first time. A flower, a million seeds, a million flowers. Each unique, each the same. And suddenly I was dumbfounded by the arrogance of human. A small seed, with no big beefy brain to catalogue, categorize, prioritize, conceptualize, quantify, qualify, justify and deify, had within it the flower it could become. Dissect the seed and there's no flower, nor any glimmer of the life that will unfold when the seed surrenders to soil, light, water. I wondered. What arrogant assuming is it, to think, with our over indulged brains and narcissistic lens of "self", that we need "do", "think", "struggle", "fight", "hustle", "cajole" and otherwise dance our way...

angelbirdflies

Search This Blog