One of the things I like to do as I’m driving around is take in the natural world around me as a way to keep myself grounded as I’m making my way through our city’s traffic. I tend to have a pretty keen ability to spot red-tailed hawks overhead in the blue sky along the roads I’m driving. They are a sight to behold when they’re flying and the sun is filtering through their red tail feathers and their wings also catch the sunlight. But I also enjoy spotting them perched along the sides of the roads on the telephone wires, seemingly staring intently down at the ground almost certainly seeking its next meal. Seeing these birds of prey is like taking a deep breath along my traveling path.
I remember when I was almost eight months pregnant and my husband and I drove from Cincinnati, Ohio to Florence, Alabama in early December. It was a bit of a long and, because of the pregnancy, a bit of an uncomfortable drive even though I tend to love road trips. As we got underway I spotted my first perched hawk on one of the green highway signs along the interstate in Lexington, Kentucky. That’s when I decided to count how many hawks we would see along our way; winter tends to be a good time to spot these beautiful birds along the roadways because they appear to be keeping an eye out for their next meal, staring down at the ground beneath them. I don’t recall the specific number we saw, but I do remember each one brought me a glimpse of beauty and provided me a small burst of delight.
One of the things I love about our teenagers is they seem to have adopted a similar sense of keen observation from their car windows. I enjoy our trips, both the short ones around town and the longer ones when we get the opportunity to travel for a short vacation adventure because I look forward to what they might spot along the way. For example, the other day, as my oldest and I were driving along our local roads, she smiled as she looked up at the puffy white clouds in the sky overhead. “Those look like the clouds in Toy Story,” she told me, pointing at the sky. And they truly did. That moment was a small burst of delight, just like spotting those hawks along the interstate way back in December 2007. I love that my girls can make those kinds of connections and that they see beauty in the world around them.
As I’ve mentioned in other posts in this blog series, one of the things our family enjoys are drives wherein we load into the car and each of the girls carries their iPad loaded with the Spotify app, their favorite playlists downloaded and ready to serenade them in their headphones as we take winding drives along the small backroads of our area. While sometimes they are happy to get lost in the music and their own musings, I always enjoy hearing their excitement when they spot something and choose to point it out to the rest of us.
Sometimes it is a punchbuggy for the now waning punchbuggy game we carried on for many years when they were younger but our 15 year old still calls out her sightings. That reference always brings a smile to my face because it reminds me of road trips from my past, with my husband before we included the girls in that game or with college friends during our wanderings along the highways.
The younger will also call out when she sees a pretty bird darting through the trees along the edges of the roads. Wildlife sightings are definitely a favorite for all of us. If one of us spots a groundhog along the side of the road munching his dinner of grass and clovers, we tend to slow down so everyone gets a chance to enjoy the cuteness. The same goes when we spot sheep or goats and deer. I, of course, always point out the hawks I see, but those can go by pretty quickly when they are in flight. Still, we keep our eyes open to the natural beauty surrounding us as we drive.
Of course, in the midst of traffic, those sightings tend to be few and far between, so, on appointment days as we drive to counseling offices, the drive sightings encompass license plates. My girls love to create words from the random letters spotted on different licence plates. It’s always a fun game to try and decipher the vanity plate letters we know spells something out in some kind of shorthand as we sound it out in all the possible variations until we hit on the right one. This game is a good source of laughter and helps make the commute in heavier traffic a little more enjoyable. Though, I must confess, I enjoy when they find random word ideas based on the letter combinations on the non-vanity plate options; those cause me to laugh a lot more than the vanity-created ones for sure.
I think the reason I appreciate these small moments of observation, of watching my girls notice the world around them, is that I see the way so many folks hurry from one thing to the next, eyes down on their phones when walking (and when driving, which is not cool), or the fixed look of focus that is overlaid with stress because our schedules tend to be be too full, too overbooked, leaving us little time or opportunity to enjoy where we are right now. I hear a lot about mindfulness and relaxation techniques intended to help stressed individuals release some of that burden of busyness. I see posts about learning to breathe or to rest, about slowing down and I wonder how we got to this place of hurry and worry.
So, when my girls notice beauty and wonder around them, and especially when they share that with the rest of us, I cannot help but smile. I hope and pray they maintain that practice. It’s a practice of mindfulness without having to work at being present. They simply are present—to themselves, to each other, to the world around them. They have developed an ability to notice things and I am certain this will serve them well. How can it not? How can it not be beneficial to pause and see a groundhog beside the road or to see the flicker of a firefly as dusk settles outside our car windows or to train their eyes to find the beauty and possibilities life offers us in an endless procession outside our car windows. May these two remarkable young women always take the time to notice and appreciate the goodness in the world.