My
son has traveling down to a science, allowing himself just enough time
to show up at the gate as they’re boarding. Of course, he travels
constantly for work. On the other hand, I like to get to the airport two
hours early to catch a meal and settle in with a book near the gate. I
imagine when you travel all the time, you stop looking at what’s around
you. It would be easy to forget what it is to see something for the
first time.
I have a recent addition to my family, a precious toddler
named Luci. When you take Luci for a walk, she MUST stop and smell each
flower in her path. She wrinkles up her nose and sniffs. She sees
EVERYTHING—the wing on a bird, the small moving dot of an airplane in
the sky, a dog with his nose poked out between the slats of his backyard
fence. She hears sounds I habitually block out—the dishwasher starting,
a garbage truck rumbling down the street, the yawn of her cat
stretching in the sun by the door. Luci has taught me a lesson.
During
the summer, I take an early morning walk each day. It’s more of a power
walk than a stroll.
Aren’t we all conscious these days of the benefits
of daily exercise? After my first post-Luci walk of the summer, I
realized, like the constant traveler, I wasn’t conscious anymore of my
surroundings. I habitually looked down at the ground and plotted my next
scene in my head for whatever story I was writing.
So, on my next
walk, I slowed down and made a point of looking around at my
surroundings. I noticed a few items I missed on previous walks: a robin
fat with new life, words in sidewalk chalk on a driveway— This is how we
roll— with a peace sign, a POW flag flying on a pole beneath an
American flag. I passed that same house every day for years.
A lone tulip that survived our unusually brutal winter.
I
don’t know why the tulip bothered me so much. It was on the property
of an old man I noticed once or twice working in his yard—a beautiful
yard kept pristine from the full attention of its owner. Now, I noticed a
few weeds, a small broken branch dried and dangling from a tree, the
pretty geraniums that always lined the driveway wilting from lack of
water. I wondered if perhaps the man was ill. Before Luci, I would have
raced by his house without a second thought, oblivious of the neglected
yard. I sent up a prayer.
Thank you, Luci, my love, for making me slow down and see.
Annalisa Russo
www.AnnalisaRusso.com/blog
www.AnnalisaRusso.com
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