Last night I stayed up late-for-me finishing a book. I seldom (if ever) fall asleep after Calvin,
so last night as I lay in bed reading by a flashlight I heard and saw things
that I normally miss. Things like bugs drawn
to the flashlight. (And while I slapped
the first one, the second one must have landed on Calvin for he no longer
buzzed, but he didn’t bite me.) Next a
little spider hurried across the book.
It was a library loan and I didn’t want to smear the pages so I let him
crawl and a few minutes later he made his way back safely using the same route
and I just watched him. While the night
noise of the frogs was familiar, Calvin’s twitching and jerking as he drifted
off to sleep were not. I realized how many
little things I miss by always falling asleep first.
The book
was very pleasant with little drama, so after I finished it and turned off the
flashlight, I rolled next to Calvin determined to lie quietly and think of all
the good little things I hadn’t been appreciating all these years, and how I
could be more observant in the future.
Habit proved too strong. I was
sound asleep before giving them their proper thoughts.
Though I
didn’t have a revelatory dream, this morning I woke and read Annie Dillard’s essay
“Seeing.” It might as well have been a
revelation for it reaffirmed those things I’d thought about the peaceful night
before. Ms. Dillard wrote:
“When I was
six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh,
I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to
find. It was a curious compulsion;
sadly, I’ve never been seized by it since.
For some reason I always “hid” the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk
up the street. I would cradle it at the
roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of
sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of
chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to
the penny from both directions. After I
learned to write I labeled the arrows:
SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY.
I was greatly excited, during all this arrow-drawing, at the thought of
the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a
free gift from the universe. But I never
lurked about. I would go straight home
and not give the matter another thought, until, some months later, I would be
gripped again by the impulse to hide another penny.
“It is
still the first week in January, and I’ve got great plans. I’ve been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped
gifts and free surprises. The world is
fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous
hand. But – and this is the point – who
gets excited by a mere penny? If you
follow one arrow, if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous
ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat kit
paddling from its den, will you count that sight a chip of copper only, and go
your rueful way? It is dire poverty
indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick
up a penny. But if you cultivate a
healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make
your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with
your poverty bought a lifetime of days.
It is that simple. What you see
is what you get.”
Of
course! Life is that simple. Calvin says,
“Wysiwyg” and “This is the stuff dreams are made of” (especially when he eats a good piece of beef or the heart of a watermelon) all. the. time. They're even in his book of Calvinisms. He must have learned it while I was asleep.
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