Natural Selection

When I was a young girl, I was chased by a Doberman Pinscher outside of Morrill Hall.  That morning, I was with my grandmother Shepard, an eccentric artist who always seemed to keep her cool, and maybe her distance, too.  It took me a long time not to fear that particular breed, although the incident did make me grateful for the dust, bones and refuge of that building, not to mention my grandmother's steely courage.

This Saturday morning, Allison peppered me with a proposition that involved visiting Morrill Hall.  It'd been a handful of years since I had visited that museum, pulled away from its entrance by growing children who had burgeoning, disparate interests, most of them now rooted in not spending time at home or with family.   Fortunately, after just a bit of Allison's cajoling (I had, after all, countered her offer with an alternate destination--the hippy cliffs of Pioneers Park), we agreed to head downtown after lunch.

What a fine decision that was.

Like a well-written premiere of a much-touted television series, our visit to Morrill Hall offered me a happy peek into Allison's future, and I left the place wanting more.  Several times, Allison whipped out her cell phone, not to text a friend but, rather,  to record an interesting fact or the name of a long-extinct species she didn't want to forget.

For someone who has been battling a mild case of the nerves as the first day of Zoo School approaches, Morrill Hall proved to be the perfect antidote.

We ended the day on our backs, scanning the night skies for the thumb-smeared silver streaks of stray meteors, while the last warmth of summer leeched into our bones. 

That night, I went to bed deeply happy and firmly centered, grateful that nature has played such a main-stage role in our children's lives, even if other players have occasionally taken away the limelight.  Somewhere, deep in their bones, both Allison and Eric still recognize the clear "fee-hee" of a chickadee's song, revel in the cecropria moth flitting through our garden, appreciate the long shadows of the setting sun against the backdrop of mixed-grass prairie.

Some nights, as I drift off to sleep, I tell myself that these are the bible stories of my children's lives, the marrow that feeds them as they head into the desert, unafraid of what they might find there.