Zoom In
The sky is clear and bright today, the sun casting shadows through the groves of redwoods and oaks and maples. Sunbeams ripple on the surface of the murky water of the pond next to our trail. We’ve been meeting my sister here on a weekly basis so our kids can run outdoors on the paved trail and hopefully appreciate nature.
Today my daughter runs ahead on the path and finds the mama duck and ducklings we spotted last week. The mama duck keeps a careful eye on her babies, leading them out of the safety of the reeds and into the bright center of the water. We know this group of ducks by the one who stands out. All the ducklings are the typical brown, save for one who is mostly yellow. It’s easy to miss at first glance, but if we focus on the details, we notice it right away.
My daughter has been keeping track of all the animals we’ve found: a lizard, four turtles, a rabbit, a horse and its foal (at the fence bordering the property), three squirrels, so many ducks. Today my son wants to spot something.
“Mommy, do you see the frog over there?” my son asks me. He points across the pond to a layer of rocks. I look, but I don’t see a frog. I don’t see any living creatures hiding out on the rocks across from us.
“Can you be more specific?” I ask him. We’re working on details. On explaining ourselves and not getting frustrated if someone else doesn’t see the same thing we do. “Details are helpful,” I say.
He squints and continues to point. “Do you see the spot where the light hits the water? It’s right there!” he tells me. I have to admit, I can see the spot where the light hits the water, where it shines through the shadow of the bridge above us. But still I only see rocks.
“I can’t see that far across,” I tell him. I’m squinting and trying to turn one of the rocks into a frog, but it’s not happening.
“Let me see your phone and I can zoom in,” he says. He’s only five, but I hear the demand and am momentarily transported to an image of his future teenage self. He’s no longer my baby and I want to freeze these moments and remember the details. Unaware of my premature nostalgia and excited about his great idea, he hops up and down as I pull out my phone and turn on the camera feature.
“I don’t know if that will work very well,” I tell him. He takes the phone from me and carefully zooms in, snaps a picture, and gives it back. “Here you go, Mommy,” he says. “Now you can see it better.”
I still don’t see anything on my phone or in the water beside us, but I can’t stand there and keep staring because he’s off and running along the path, cousin and sister hand in hand.
Maybe there was a frog, and maybe there wasn’t. I’m not going to tell him he’s wrong, that he was imagining things. Sure, he could have been trying to compete with his sister, prove that he can spot creatures too, whether or not there are any. Or he may have truly spotted a frog nestled within those rocks that the rest of us couldn’t see. We are at a pond and the possibility is strong. He’s growing up and I’m going to let him speak for himself. I want to lead him to places where I can be alongside him as he notices the details of his surroundings. Whether or not we see the same things is a mystery.
He will probably forget about the frog as he runs along the trail, swept up in the joy of running under the shadows of the trees. But I won’t forget the way he sounded, how he specifically told me to look where the light hit the water, and how sometimes people can see different things, even after we zoom in.
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Illuminate."
