The Watcher

When she sits on my daughter’s chair and stares out the window, carefully monitoring for birds or squirrels or—oh, raptures—rabbits, she is so intent the fringes of her Spaniel ears quiver. Even on a dim, wet morning like this one, she is captured by the potential for chasing. Once she catches sight of a flutter or a scurry, she bolts from her chair, demanding to be let out the back door.

Rest assured, she will never catch anything. She cannot stop her joyous yapping as she defies the twenty steps to the grass. Just the scrabbling on the wooden planks would give the most somnolent lurker plenty of notice to mosey on.

Even so, she watches. If I could ask her, I am sure she would not offer a single word of discouragement. Her’s is the purposeful gaze of hope.

To be a watcher. To be an indefatigable hoper. To be a joyous yapper.

These seem like Life. These seem worth noticing and planting deep within one’s self. The sounds of my life burble around me as I patter on this backlit keyboard. I wonder about this habit of mine, this persistent tapping. I wonder with a bit of human cynicism if, in the face of the skyscrapers of gorgeous words compiled by histories worth of human minds, my words can add anything more than yapping into the wind. But the wisdom of the Spaniel teaches me, the joy comes from the doing not the having.

Thank you, sweet Skye. May we be watchers together.