Delighted! Again! — The Wee Wanderer

The past week or so, which will go down in the Seattle history books as “Snowmageddon 2019,” has been incredibly informative for this new parent. I’ve been a high-school teacher for 11 years, and we’ve had almost as many snow days the past two weeks as all previous years put together. Last Monday and Tuesday, schools were closed, and when we came back on Wednesday, students (and many teachers) complained of having been “bored.”

I know that my toddler will one day be a teenager, but it’s almost impossible to imagine him bored, ever. There are just too many things for him to be delighted with in this still newish world, and as I started to feel cooped up inside and a little bored myself, I was even more impressed by the things that Levi is entertained by. Consider the humble light switch, for example. No light goes unnoticed by wee Levi, whose reverence for electricity knows no bounds. And the dishwasher? Forget it. An entire snow day could be spent in due deference to this amazing piece of machinery.

But the best entertainment of all comes from outside.

We had three more snow days this week, and every day I was reminded of Mary Oliver’s “Morning Poem,” which begins: “Every morning the world is created.” Levi, who turns two next month, began each day with a trip to the living room window. To me, each morning looked exactly like the last, white snow signifying another long day spent mostly indoors. But Levi was delighted day after day, paying tribute to the snow as if seeing it for the first time, with a series of solemn “Woahs” (his second favorite word, after “No”).

Oliver, who died last month, would have loved Levi’s morning ritual. In “This World,” she writes: “I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it nothing fancy. But it seems impossible. Whatever the subject, the morning sun glimmers it.” The sun wasn’t exactly “glimmering” this week, but Levi saw the magic in everything, just as anyone new to this world would. I found myself feeling a little ashamed, as I struggled to feel any genuine admiration for the way nature was taking its course, instead worrying about road conditions and counting the days we’d be adding to the end of the school year.

I love Mary Oliver, as an English teacher and as a nature lover. For the past decade or so, I have depended on her to re-awaken me, to cut through the multitude of human-made distractions and remind me to be present and to feel gratitude for the simple pleasures the world offers all the time. In “Why I Wake Early,” Oliver observes that the sun shines “into the windows of, even, the miserable and the crotchety.” As we grow up and become accustomed to the wonders of the world, like snow and light, it sometimes takes work to notice that the world is so “fancy.” But the world will continue to remind us, if we pay attention. At 41 (and admittedly “crotchety” from time to time), I am lucky to have Levi, who, at least at this age, is always happy to alert me to the magic he sees all around him, everywhere.