Bloom

I'm going to present to you three or four separate strands that have been weaving themselves together in my mind over the past few days. Be patient. The dots connect.

(Yup, I know, mixed metaphors.)

Happening #1: I hear an interview with LOST producers Damon Lindelof and Carleton Cuse, in which they address one of the many fan questions with the following comment: It is not our intention to explain away every detail on this show, because we believe in a certain amount of mystery in this world that cannot be tidily rationalized (my paraphrase).

Happening #2: I take the kids to a free summer movie at a local theater -- Charlotte's Web. In the movie, Fern's mom bares her troubled soul to the family doctor, concerned about her daughter's "excessive" hours spent in conversation with barnyard animals. The doctor points out to Mrs. Arable that perhaps those conversations really are happening, that perhaps there are miracles happening every day that most of us are too busy to notice. Philosophy aptly highlighted by this song.

Happening #3: We share a dinner table with some lovely childless friends, and during their husband/wife banter, the husband comments that they'll get around to "throwing a kid" (he's a horse guy) once they have more money, 'cause kids are so expensive (and inconvenient). A common enough attitude.

Happening #4: In the course of three days, Caroline, age 3.5, progresses from mild fear of the water to swimming underwater to jumping off the side of the pool, swimming submerged for ten feet to our waiting arms, and then repeating for two hours with a ferocious intensity that defies exhaustion. No lessons. No secret I can share with you. She just lit her own match.

It's too easy to inhabit a cynical crust as one grows older, in which there must be a rational explanation for everything, and even if one believes, as I do, that God Himself plays a pretty involved role in the affairs of men, to assume that He only does so for a good reason.

But when we become parents, we inherit a front-row seat at an ongoing, unfolding display of magical, mysterious, ordinary miracles. Expensive? Not really. They only cost the willingness to notice, to take delight in discovery. To watch them bloom.