Conscious Choice: Revisions

September 2007 | Life, the Universe and Everything

Revisions

By Juliet Eastland

For years, I was an ant. Scurrying through urban anthills, burrowing through concrete canyons, I skittered my way industriously through human and vehicular traffic, each day full of a thousand near misses. Swept along on sidewalk streams, my world narrowed from 360 degrees to just the stretch of path ahead, and I barely noticed. I couldn’t have stopped to smell the flowers if I wanted.

But then I had a baby. And now, twenty months later, the world looks radically different. Today my daughter and I are squatting under a tree in the park, examining bugs. For her, the insect world is divided into two categories: the earthbound — “ants” — and the airborne — “flies.” But in this case, the bugs in question really are ants, flowing in black rivulets between a tree root and a nearby hole in the dirt. Their activity appears random until I realize they are transporting tiny bits of matter very efficiently from point A to B, all the while managing to avoid crashing into their coworkers. The scene feels familiar.

“Hole,” my daughter announces proudly, pointing to the hole.

We have been crouching in this position for eons, and I’m sweating under the warm, early fall sun. My neck and knees are aching, but it’s a pleasing pain, a reminder that while these muscles may be stiff from disuse, they’re still functional. Following my daughter’s graceful and capable lead, I have become a dancer, bending and swiveling, crawling and craning my neck. And as my previously linear world unfolds into three dimensions, I am rediscovering, albeit painfully, how to move and how to see.

At last, her attention is exhausted. “Mommy, lie,” she instructs. We flop on our backs next to each other, hands touching, and stare up at the lattice of leaves above us. They are still green, but glowing with a hint of the reds and yellows to come. Pieces of sky glint through the branches like mosaic tiles. My daughter wiggles her toes.

Out of nowhere, anxiety washes over me, and my stomach jumps. It’s the sky, I realize. The last time I looked — really looked — at the sky, I was living on the east coast. It was a similarly clear, warm fall day, September 11, 2001, and I was on the sidewalk outside my downtown New York City office watching planes crash into the World Trade Center a mile down the street. As the plume of smoke snaked upward, I focused on the pure, unwavering blue of the sky. What made such radiance possible, I wondered? Didn’t it have something to do with the reflection from the oceans? I couldn’t remember, and in the chaos that followed, I never opened a reference book to look it up.

My daughter sits up and crawls over my legs. “Tickle,” she warns, tickling my stomach. We roll in a somersault, laughing, and as the colors tumble around us, I wonder how I can ever thank her. She is allowing, commanding me to see the world from different vantage points — upside down, or on my knees. And in the process, I get to make new associations, to layer over the old ones like a palimpsest. She is offering me a second chance, and I owe it to her to take it. Silently, I promise to keep my eyes open, and to look up why the sky is blue when we get home.

Juliet Eastland has written for Tricycle, Orion, Bitch and other publications.

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: