I Wish I Had My Crayons





The View From Our Front Porch

Years ago, my young niece stood transfixed at the screen door of our farm house, gazing out at the sun which was setting in the west; meanwhile, her mother was upstairs, calling for her to come and have her evening bath.

Lost in the moment and oblivious to something as mundane as a mere bath, my niece exclaimed aloud in voice filled with yearning and awe, “Oh, I wish I had my crayons!”  In that moment, I was swept along with her to a magical place filled with beauty and wonder.



An Artist At Work

Reflecting back on that episode, I recognize that the reason why we were able to bear witness to such beauty was that her attention was there in the moment. She wasn’t focused on the routine tasks that needed to get done before bedtime; she wasn’t worrying about getting into the right university program or climbing up the corporate ladder; she wasn’t fretting about whether she’d have enough money to retire. She was fully present in the moment; in turn, her intense focus drew my attention and together, we immersed ourselves in its magnificent glow.

As Susan Slotnick points out in the CBC article about prisoners and dance, attention is “the heart of love.”

In that moment, my niece’s heart was open to the glorious scene before her eyes. She wasn’t angry at her brother; hurt by some careless comment of a co-worker; bitter about missing out on a promotion; resigned to the fact that life had bestowed all its goodies on others, but had somehow passed her by. Instead, she was utterly and completely in the present gazing out at a beautiful sunset with an open heart and on some level, she recognized that these kinds of moments are fleeting, transient, fluid; being human, she wanted to capture its beauty with the power of her crayons and in doing so, transcend the temporal limits of this world.

The Blogger As A Young Artist

In her open heart, I heard a poignant echo of my own childhood and was transported back to that earlier time.

There has been a lot of talk recently about the disappearance of the bees and Monarch butterflies in Southwestern Ontario.  Monarch butterflies were fixtures in my childhood; something that we took for granted. Milkweed was so plentiful that my mother once offered us a penny a pod to pick them; in a short while, we had picked so many that she had to put a stop to the enterprise, lest we bankrupt her piggy bank.

Ask anyone who was a rural child of my generation living in this area during the summer and chances are they poked holes into the metal lid of a glass jar, filled it with milkweed and put a caterpillar inside; eventually, it would spin its cocoon and however much we might want to keep it forever inside our glass cage, we knew that we had to release it out into the world in order for it to complete its transformation into a beautiful Monarch butterfly.

I would argue that this practice of the jar-and-caterpillar was a type of meditation—a way to focus our attention on and instill an appreciation for the wonders of the natural world.

Thanks to our hyper-focus on efficiency in farming, the milkweed is almost gone from our area now and so it would seem the monarch butterflies. My question is: why didn’t we notice? When something so majestic and beautiful disappears in front of our eyes, why isn’t there a huge hue and cry—the kind of uproar we’d see in Canada if a Stanley Cup hockey final were pre-empted on television? Are we so distracted by the demands of the daily grind—are we so removed from the natural world—that we no longer have the ability to see what is happening in front of us—to mourn its destruction and the part that we, as a human race, have played in it?

This week at the high school library where I work, we handed out photo ID cards to our students; invariably, when students were given their card, they’d take a quick glance at it and then heave a collective groan, “That is so baaaaaad. I look soooooo ugly in that picture.”  

After hearing a few of these self-denigrating comments, I began saying as I handed out the cards, “I just want you to know that you’re beautiful. When you’re my age and you look back at this card and at this time in your life, you’ll realize this.” Invariably, they’d laugh, but hopefully, the thought will stay with them, especially as they make their way out into the world.

Just like the caterpillar in my jar, youth has its own unique beauty, but I would argue that so does each stage of life. I’m sure an elderly person would look at my middle-aged self and ask, “Can you walk without pain or fear of falling? Do you still drive? Are you able to live in your own home without assistance?” and point out that these years are precious and to be savoured. Hopefully, when I’m old, I will be grateful to have lived a full life—appreciate the beauty in having accumulated a degree of wisdom, a heart filled with memories and once again, have the time to gaze upon the wonders of the world around me without sneaking glances at my watch. If my eyesight, strength and/or memory fail me, I would like to think that, on some level, these things will still give me solace.

That is the lesson of the monarch and the sunset, I think. Surely, life is about change and transformation; inherent in that is loss—not the mindless destruction of a habitat and species but rather, of each phase of life. In order to move on to the next stage, we must shed our cocoons, let go of the day’s light, exchange our youth for experience and wisdom and ultimately, give up life itself.

I hope that wherever you are on the path, you will notice, appreciate and protect the fragile splendour of life around you and although I don't have my crayons handy, please know that this article is my way of telling you—and the world—just how beautiful you are.