Totally stealing the concept from Stephanie and Lene. From William Carlos Williams, a pediatrician whose poetry was my favorite in college, written, if I remember correctly, about a six-year-old oncology patient of his:

The Red Wheelbarrow

Trying not to violate copyright, I offer the link. I used to think of this poem when my children, especially when they were little, would fixate on some one particular thing and how important it became to them for a passing time. My youngest, at about 18 months, was given a little red plastic hammer by a friend of mine that for ten days afterwards was in his hands round the clock, asleep or awake. If you tried to remove it from his sleeping clutch, he would wake up. “Mine!” and he would groggily reach for it back and roll over with it tucked safely half under him. With three older siblings, he learned that word early on.

When he was awake, he was constantly, constantly tap-tapping it on every surface he toddled past, listening to the sound that that one would make. Now that one. The wall. The fridge. Mom’s leg. Assessing the interaction between it and everything he could reach. Same hammer, but such different effects. It completely absorbed his world day after day, and I liked to think he was training his ear for future musicianship.

I think he did.

“so much depends

upon

the red wheel

barrow… “

Him. I’ve got me a good one.

Meantime. I just dropped a package off at the post office, and as usual drove to the one at Bayshore: there are always shore birds to see along the way there, so much more peaceful of a drive than through city streets to the one in the opposite direction. I took my camera along, though I knew that was probably wishful thinking.

There were four snowy egrets in the marshlands, but off a bit in the distance: too far from anywhere I could reasonably pull over just then to try to get a closer shot. I continued on.

On my way back, coming over a rise in the road, there, suddenly, was one right there. A snowy egret. On the sidewalk. Strolling along like a long-legged model on a catwalk, right there in all its glorious white plumage and black stockings. A couple of office workers from a nearby building were walking towards it on their break, deep in conversation and seemingly oblivious to what was walking away from them just ahead, going at about the same pace. People are funny. So was the egret: it turned its head and followed me with one bright eye as I drove past it, with me knowing that by the time I’d be able to get to where I might park the car, those walkers would probably have scared it off into the sky. My camera didn’t get to see it–but I did.

There was one time I went to the post office in the opposite direction from home for whatever reason. Now, I am by no means a tall person, but I’m married to one, and our kids take after their father much more than me in that department. So I’ve heard all the lame comments time after time, the “do you play basketball,” the “how’s the weather up there.”

Standing in line for a clerk that day, a man came in behind me. I glanced up, then tried to give him his space, knowing he didn’t need to hear one more stranger chiming in on the obvious. But after a few moments, I couldn’t help but chuckle slightly, and to my quiet delight, he started gradually chuckling too, as if he were in on the joke. Which I think he was.

Then two sentences were spoken out loud:

“My son’s 6’9″.”

“That IS tall!” he affirmed, from about half a foot higher up than that.

I did not ask him how on earth he found a car he could fit into, or buy clothes, or all these things that we’ve found hard enough to do*. It was enough. Someone was in on the secret world of very tall people, even someone who once went looking for a copy of Randy Newman’s “Short people got no reason to live” song for her husband–Happy Valentine’s Day, honey.

And I think of that man for a moment with a smile, every now and then, as I turn the car the other direction, letting the tall snowy egrets and the petite redwing blackbirds vie for my inner attention, along with the occasional pelican.

————-

(*A Prius. The new ones, anyway; the first one we got, a 2001, the hubby eventually cracked the dashboard by being scrunched up so tight in it, even though it fit him better than most of the cars on the market at the time. The new one fits him much better.)