the subtle art of noticing

Mother’s Day. For me, it’s a day of mixed emotions. A day that I miss my late mother, but also a day to honour her, as well as think on the women who have mothered me, how I mother through my work, and ultimately the ways I choose to mother my son.

This spring I’ve been actively noticing with him. Noticing the puddles freezing over and how the thin ice cracks under our feet. Noticing the first buds on the trees, the birds carrying twigs in their beaks. The return of the pelicans to Wascana Creek.

Birds have factored large into our spring noticing. My little guy has grown fond of a copy of Birds of North America. I read him excerpts from the book. He also “reads” to me,

“This duck is called a pug and eats hippopotamuses.”

I’m intent on expanding beyond my local species basics: grackle, red-winged blackbird, yellow-headed blackbird, goose, pelican, cormorant and robin. This week we’ve been at my mother-in-law’s farmhouse and so we’re working on what kind of doves are in her trees, if there are buffleheads in the sloughs and enjoying the purple martins we saw at the play park in town — the same play park where a straight-up adorable little girl told me she was a biting spider, and a moment later hugged my leg and sunk her teeth into my flesh.

I’m also excited to identify flowers with my bear cub, though I’m in need of a good study guide for native prairie plants. We hunted for crocus this year, which was a first for me. I’m hoping we’ll get lucky and come across Lady’s Slipper on a walk.

crocus hunting

Noticing has invited curiosity back to the table. I find May to be a bittersweet month: Mother’s Day, Mom’s birthday, and spring in all its raging glory. There are many reminders of the woman who guided, pulled and prodded me into a fulsome life and many reminders of what glorious life surrounds mine. I’ve also found myself hopeless in the realities of the war in Gaza. The unspeakable horrors that make every kindness precious. I’ve been craving beauty and rest — luxuries that I’m guilty of taking for granted. And I want my hands to be useful… I would like to be useful. Working at the margins through acts of service. It feels inconsequential in the scope of my heartache and I often think of what Joni said: They won’t give peace a chance. That was just a dream some of us had.

This week I’ve been pruning my MIL’s raspberry patch. I picked berries last summer while we were visiting and I enjoyed it so much: the time outside, the simplicity of the task, the reward. I’m more than willing to endure the thorns and the seasonal ticks, and that’s saying something. Last night I picked a half-dozen of those creepy blood suckers off myself. I panic at the discovery of a tick… much like how I’ve startled both times this spring when a garter snake has surprised me in the grass. I didn’t issue a sound either time, but I sure thought I was a goner.

Yesterday afternoon we sat on the grass searching for bugs and I was aware of encroaching boredom. What followed was thoughts of when I was a girl and how I used to sprawl out on the prickly lawn at our farm and stare up into the sky. My adult self turned over and looked upward. There, right above me, smack in the middle of the blue was the crescent moon. I showed my son and soon we were talking about its phases and reminding each other which is our favourite. He has a thing for the waxing gibbous, I’m a waning crescent kind of guy.

Without explanation he got up and ran to his grandmother with joy writ across his sweet face.

As my son stretches taller, becomes daring on his strider bike and the nape of his neck darkens in the sun, I’m reminded to notice notice notice. It’s the only way I know how to appreciate the heart-shattering beauty of his growth and our place amidst nature’s unrelenting motion.

Noticing has been the bond between grief and joy. The great flex in transmuting my dark and helpless feelings into humour and strength. When confronted with harsh facts it softens the blow and reminds me that pacifism is not passivism. Noticing reminds me that my work as a writer and performer is to absorb, reflect and relate. Coincidently, those are three of the greatest feats a mother can do.

---

Teach the children. We don't matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin flowers. And the frisky ones—inkberry, lamb’-quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones—rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms.

Attention is the beginning of devotion.

From Mary Oliver’s essay, “Upstream”, in the book of the same name.

---

july 11
Saskatchewan Jazz Festival
Saskatoon, SK
with Johnny Reid, Alex Cuba, Jeffery Straker
tickets

july 13
Big Flat Folk Festival
Eastend, SK
with Colter Wall, Blake Berglund, Del Barber, Noeline Hofmann, Zachary Lucky, Lachlan Neville, Gil and Wil
tickets

september 7
Homestand Festival
Ross Wells Ball Park
Moose Jaw, SK
with 54•40, Toque, The Steadies
tickets