The Little Bee is smitten with colors–or more so, the names of them. She began devouring crayon names like inchworm, wild blue yonder, and purple mountain’s majesty. She will point out any color in a room, on a house, a car, on a sign, anywhere, and tell you it’s corresponding crayon name. We were corrected the other day that the car we saw was indeed goldenrod, not yellow. She has also expanded her repertoire to the names of the eye shadows I use, and will eagerly want to know if I’m wearing truffle, golden retriever, or black diamond. For her birthday she received, collectively, 22 nail polishes from her grandparents. She read through them all delighting in poodleskirt pink, make mine mango, crystal waters, cloud 9 and sea escape. Her enthusiasm alone has me musing on every color I see. I hesitate telling her about the paint swatch aisle at Home Depot, we could be there for hours and who knows, end up painting the entire house.

What I really wonder though is if she realizes that she is a walking magnet to the spectacular that is hidden in the everyday. She sees it, feels it and is drawn to it, and when I have the lucky chance to glimpse the world through her eyes, even for just a flash, I am there too, amidst all the magic and beauty. The way she marvels in the brightness of the world around her, the way otherwise ordinary words come to life and dance before her, all of this will be the magic carpet that elevates her to her calling one day. There is a caveat though for having this kind of vision and sensitivity. For as much poetry she can find, all the fear and darkness that also fills this world, seeps in just as readily, creating an anxious child, fearful and sometimes mistrusting. I wonder if she knows that all the anxiety and agony she is experiencing now, with math, with girl relationships, with just being a 9 year old, will get better some day. I pray earnestly that I am capable enough to help her climb through the muck and confusion that adolescence and early adulthood is sure to bring. I will try my best, I promise a hundred wild blue yonders that I will.

I saw a White-Breasted Nuthatch on the naked trees in my backyard the other day. Beautiful little things with long beaks, white heads with a black strip running down the middle. Boy do I want need a great pair of binoculars. For the last several months though, I have spotted Red-Tailed Hawks everywhere. I saw one land in a field with it’s talons up, I’m sure it caught something. I saw one on a farm’s fencepost on the drive to the kids’ school, several at different times flying overhead, another land in a treetop off a highway while we sped by. I saw one recently while in Florida, perched high on a utility post, and last month a smaller one was atop a red rock formation at the Garden of the Gods. I know the Red-Tailed Hawk is a common bird, especially in Colorado, but what makes a typical experience atypical is the awareness that comes rushing in when we see the signs, like there is a particular and extraordinary message just waiting for us if we take a keener look, if we just cock our heads and tune in a little closer to what the universe is trying to say. Oh yes, I do believe in mountain meadow, in dreamscape blue, in midnight black ravens and yellow breasted warblers. I believe in the seers of this plane, the ones that live the magic and must walk through darkness to keep it. I believe in the atypical, the signs and the messages. I must, for what would we be, what would this world be without? No music, no art, no poets, no treehouses or Frank Lloyd Wright. What a boring, common world would that be?

with love from a sky blue Monday…

Uncategorized imagination signs the bee wonder