in pursuit of awe

A List Of Wonderful Things

by MAck Ford

To wonder is to admire the inexplicable, to notice a rare delight; it is to allow one’s curiosity to take a meander and prod at something surprising. Lately, I have begun to collect small moments of wonder. I pluck them from this soft world as if I was born to do it—to look and listen and be filled with light.

On the corner of the street I love is a tree, beside which is a small tuft of grass. It sprouted from a sliver in the concrete, and now it overflows from that small patch of dirt. It is insistent on its own existence. It’s a prideful little bush, shockingly green even when most other plants have gone gray with cold. Some days a snail can be found in the small mossy patch, sheltered by the weeds. I have named him Terrace, and I am quite fond of him.

It is a practice that must be learned, to notice things which are awe-inspiring. Some come naturally, the sorts of wonders which our minds are primed to soak up like a great ocean sponge.

As in, someone places a baby in my arms. She is warm and heavier than she looks. She is blinking up at me with those enormous eyes. When the initial nerves subside, and it is clear that the child is not going to leap from my arms or burst into tears, my mind wraps around the baby ...

Unable to engage, my family simply let the episode pass.

Modern medicine is one of life’s greatest blessings. I have no doubt that, without it, natural selection would have weeded my family out long, long ago. Knobby knees, the worst spines, a myriad of cancers—but, of everything that runs in my family, whatever brought on my oma’s dementia is certainly the worst.

Aging is cruel enough in good health. To love, be loved, to lose. To grieve yourself before you are even gone. Crueler, though, is to lose yourself, and not even realize.

In her last days, my oma did not know how to love; she had forgotten everything she needed to know to be able to. Names, feelings, words. Still, we stroked her hair, washed her back, and watched her fall apart before us, whispering gibberish, speaking in tongues. We loved her so dearly—and she could not know it or return it, seeing us only as strangers.

I don’t think her dementia was ever explained to me. Would it have hurt less if it was? If I understood why she had forgotten me, after all the love she’d shown me?

I grieved her with every breath she took.

*

I cannot bear the thought of forgetting. ...

“You notice the changing of the seasons, the dissipation of the morning mist and the couple walking hand in hand down the street. You take it all in as if those were versions of yourself.”

“I am thrust into my own indie film, the kind that my mom hates because there’s no obvious happy ending but I love because, mom, it’s just good art.”