Learning from the baby

Monday night is Swankette's knitting night. That means I'm on baby duty solo for a few hours. Mostly we go on walks, read books, and play.

But the other day, as we tended to the in-laws' garage sale, we learned something Hedgehog likes.

He likes to look up at trees.

I decided to give that a shot. I put down a blanket and put the boy down under a tree in our backyard.

He was transfixed.

I decided this would be a great chance to get some reading done, so I grabbed a lawn chair and read. But I felt funny sort of hovering over my son like that. So I lay down next to him and read. But my arms got tired and heavy holding the book.

So I watched the tree with him. I explained to him some things about wind and leaves.

The sun was brightening a few leaves at the very top of the tree, which were sometimes obscured by the darker nearby leaves. The whole thing shifted in the wind like a kaleidoscope of green.

At one point, I closed one eye so that I would lose depth perception. A brown latticework of branches provided a proscenium for all the leaves, which maneuvered all around the brown.

We gave my son a middle name that matches my favorite transcendentalist writer, and Monday, he taught me a transcendentalist lesson--every now and then, put down the book and look at the tree.