Watching Clouds

My husband was driving our daughter and her friend home one evening. The girls were chatting in the back of the car happily when my daughter suddenly noticed the sunset. She began describing it as beautiful, magnificent, glorious, wonderful, but she never used the word "sunset" to label it.

Her friend, in a bored tone of voice, informed our daughter that it was called a sunset. Our daughter quickly admitted that it was a sunset and wasn't it amazingly colorful and beautiful, bright, and amazing. Again, the friend remarked that it was a sunset.

I laughed when I heard the story because I could imagine the conversation in my head. After laughing, I began thinking about it more deeply, and it made sense to me that our daughter would be enamored with the sky: she's our daughter.

She's the daughter of a meteorologist, and a daughter of a woman who grew up watching the clouds to see if they could hold up a glider. She's the daughter of two people who look to the sky all day to watch the clouds. My husband and I watch the clouds as information givers, as beauty providers, and as stress relievers. Both of us watch clouds move, change, grow, reflect light.

I am reading a book right now called Last Child in the Woods. The section I'm reading right now is talking about experiencing nature. Basically, the author is making the argument that people of today are having a hard time appreciating nature because they have not been a part of nature.

To me, I am a part of the clouds. I am a part of the sky. My husband is the same way. We value it. We experience it. Our daughter has absorbed that and now experiences it, too. I'm grateful for that funny conversation in the car. One child wasn't wrong and one child wasn't better. One child finds herself part of the sky, and one child labels the sky's action.

Our child is now watching clouds.