Catalog your fairies
“Tessie, you wanna go to the creek and take a class?” I asked two weeks ago. I had received a notice of a two-hour nature class for 5-7 year-olds at the Botanical Garden near our house. “YES! YES! YES!” she screamed, unsure what I was asking, but absolutely committed nonetheless. We should all be so sure.
I emailed back to reserve a spot. We showed up at 9:50 a.m. on the morning of the class and paid our fee. Tess hung close to me, the smallest in the class. “But I’m not five yet,” she whispered. “I won’t be five until tomorrow.”
Little did Tessie know that she, in fact, had already turned five a few days before, on a day when I was working in Seattle. We had decided to hold her party a few days after my return and since she is happily free from clocks, watches, calendars, and other accoutrement that impose artificiality and measurement on our days, she didn’t know.
“It’s okay, Tweetie,” I told her. “You’ll be five tomorrow. It’s fine.”
The other mothers brought their children in and left. Tess held me close. “Please don’t leave me,” she said. She takes time to acclimate, sometimes, just like me. And so I sat in the back of the room so she could turn her head and be reassured, until they got ready to leave on their “hike” through the Botanical Gardens, clipboards in hand.
They were junior scientists that morning. Their task was to note the living things they saw on their walk, as well as any signs of living things. When the group gathered to go outside, I blew a kiss to the now-sure Tess and went home for an hour or two to make preparations for the birthday party the next day.
I tiptoed back in around noon. The children were finishing the books they were creating with drawings of the animals and other living things they had seen in the Botanical Gardens. Each had their clipboard next to them, their scientific notations made in a wavering hand. One young second grader’s work was especially lovely, her robin’s "brest" and waterbug, goldfish and white Admiral butterfly.
The teacher saw me and started apologizing in that way adults do, with “asides” above the heads of children. “Well, Tess has quite an imagination,” she started, in that way that indicates that having quite an imagination is a liability, not an asset. “She is drawing a beach. I told her we should draw what we saw, but she insisted on drawing a beach.”
“Well,” I said slowly, determined not to fall into the trap it is far too easy to fall into, that of complicity in adultism, “maybe she likes beaches. Maybe she saw a beach.” Maybe she’s five years old and doesn’t need to be held to the rigorous standards of the American Botanical Society just yet, I was thinking to myself.
The teacher stared at me. “Who knows?” I said playfully, tousling Tess’ hair, “perhaps that beach is where magic happens!” “YES! YES! YES!” she screamed. “Look! Here’s the palm tree I saw!”
The teacher blinked.
Who on earth am I to say that Tess didn’t see a beach? And why on earth does it matter if she saw a beach or not, I wondered. And what is the scientific definition of a beach, after all? She loves going to the creek in the Botanical Gardens; perhaps where water meets shore seems a beach to her.
I looked down at Tess, happily coloring a bright yellow sun over a green palm tree and blue, blue water while her older compatriots labored over spotted spiders and magnolia leaves. “I tried to tell her,” the teacher said. Perhaps she was nervous that I would object. She need not worry.
And then I saw it, Tess’ scientific notations on the clipboard she had so seriously grasped as they left on their walk. Turns out she had seen quite a few living things in her walk around the Botanical Gardens. There was the evidence, written in her five-year-old hand:
BLUEBERRY CICADA HOLE
SSTREWBBRRY
WATERBUG
WATERLILY
NUT FISH MOLE
SPIDER
On the “Evidence of Living Things” page, she had joyfully circled “POOP” and put a long line of exclamation points after it. As would we all.
Years ago, Mr Brilliant was asked to appraise the book collection of a distinguished pediatrician in Washington, D.C. When he got there, it was soon clear that this tall, important man was already deep in the hold of Alzheimer’s.
Mr Brilliant tried repeatedly to connect with the doctor who was confusing his book collection for a set of golf clubs. Finally, Mr Brilliant asked a question: “What was the most important thing you learned in your sixty years of being a doctor to children?” he asked, nearly in desperation to connect. Suddenly, the doctor straightened to his full height: “Never interrupt a child. Let them finish. It’s the most important thing in the world to them, what they’re saying. We have to resist the temptation to finish their sentences for them.”
And with that, Mr Brilliant remembers, the doctor slumped again.
It was a tiny word far at the top of Tess’ page that captured my attention, a word that had, no doubt, been ignored or debated by her teacher. There, very near the top margin of the page was what she really saw on that walk in the Botanical Gardens. There, smooshed right up against the top of the page was the word “fairy," in that beautiful handwriting of hers, the "i" dotted with a tiny cloud, the whole of it a mix of small and capital letters.
Forget the beach. What Tess really saw was a fairy.
And if she wrote in her quivering little hand that she saw a fairy, far be it from me to argue. I only wish I saw more fairies in my daily life. Perhaps I should try harder. Or, perhaps, maybe I shouldn’t try so hard.
37days Do it Now Challenge
Don’t be afraid to write the word “fairy” at the top of your page of scientific notations. Who’s to say you didn’t see a fairy in the garden, near the beach? And you—you there, you the teacher the mother the adult in the picture—don’t interrupt and don’t discount the vision of a child. Ever.
