An Appreciation for Wonder
Birdwatching, Samantha Harvey's Orbital, and raising my child with a spirit of discovery
I’m nearly one month into the parenting journey. Certain realities are stronger than ever. Namely, how much sleep I get per night is entirely dependent on the whims of my child. Harper’s circadian rhythm is still the opposite of ours, meaning she sleeps well during the day but not so well at night. Even nighttime sleeping for her is typically interrupted by fidgeting, wheezing, and bouts of crying, which of course means it is very difficult for us to sleep uninterrupted. Sara and I are still taking separate shifts to watch her, which is both physically and emotionally challenging. At times, we have been reduced to only seeing each other for “shift change” at night. I can now understand why, as Emily Oster summarizes here, many couples report a decline in marital satisfaction immediately after having a child. When your offspring dictate everything that you do, there is little time left for you to invest in your relationship as a couple. I know anecdotally that many marriages fall into this trap, with the spouses experiencing dwindling intimacy as the all-consuming demands of parenting take their toll. Sara and I are aware of this risk, and I think this recognition will help us find a balance between investing in our marriage and investing in childrearing. In order to be an effective parent, you have to be an effective spouse first. Parenting is without question a team effort.
Nights are so hard that they make the days seem comparatively easy. Harper will easily take a two-hour nap in a stroller as we trek around town, sometimes walking as much as four miles. I think this is because the rhythmic bouncing of the stroller seems to mimic the feeling of being in utero. Harvey Karp, in his book The Happiest Baby on the Block, notes that babies are born with a deeply rooted desire for womb-like conditions. Hence our daily jaunts as a family around Washington DC, a city that I am immensely thankful we selected as the location for Harper’s birth as well as our parental leave. Blessed with some glorious springtime weather, with the trees leafing and flowering, we have spent a lot of time lately in parks.
Museums have also offered a welcome change in scenery. After having lived in DC for nearly a decade, I realize that I have massively underutilized the Smithsonian museums, which are fantastic and free. There are even obscure ones like the National Postal Museum that have a treasure trove of heritage artifacts, telling the story of America through stamps. Having a kid has given me a newfound appreciation for our cultural institutions and the learning opportunities that they afford families, and it helps that at least some of the recent renovations have been made with very young children in mind. The National Gallery of Art, for example, has a lactation room, which we used to give Harper a much-needed boost midway through admiring the museum’s impressive collection of paintings by Picasso, Matisse, and various French impressionists.
Even though Harper cannot yet appreciate or interact with her environment, I still think it’s important to get in the habit of pursuing new sights and sounds with her. Sara and I are determined to approach parenting with an appreciation for discovery, particularly when it comes to the natural world. I have noticed how ninety percent of the children’s books that we own (nearly all gifted to us) feature animals as the main protagonists, and for good reason. Young children are rightly fascinated by other creatures, as they are encountering them for the first time, and must contend with the fact that there are other beings out there that possess a life force similar to theirs. In adulthood, I think we grow so accustomed to the natural world that we no longer view it through the lens of wonder.
Take birds, for example. When I stop on the sidewalk and listen to a birdsong I don’t recognize (usually with my Merlin app held out), I am aware that I’m the only person who seems to take notice. I am the unapologetic weirdo who will stop what he’s doing, even mid-sentence, to track a white-breasted nuthatch creeping along a tree branch in our neighborhood.
Every parent has a certain script that they are following, which is based in some way on their own childhood. In my case, I developed a love for birdwatching as a teen. My mother would take my brother and I on birding trips around the Seattle-Tacoma area where I grew up. Armed with a pair of binoculars, I learned to leaf through an Audubon field guide and identify what I was seeing. I wasn’t a list-keeper back then, but I still have distinct memories of spotting particular birds, like a Eurasian widgeon (rare in North America) that I discovered at Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge sometime around 2003. Bird feeders in our backyard also afforded us with all kinds of up-close encounters with local wildlife: Steller’s jays, chestnut-backed chickadees, pine siskins, evening grosbeaks, and — to this day one of my favorites — the majestic pileated woodpecker. This kind of enrichment I received as a child and adolescent was invaluable, as I became a lifelong lover of nature, and still find myself seeking solace in nature walks and experiencing the odd thrill of adding new birds to my life list (currently at 355 species and counting, thanks to a year and a half of birding in Central America). I look forward to the day when Harper can accompany me on these walks with her own pair of kid binoculars, sharing in the joy of discovery. I won’t be crestfallen if she doesn’t develop into some kind of ornithological prodigy (though I won’t rule out the possibility). All I hope to instill in her is this concept of wonder, of taking in what the natural world has to offer and valuing its conservation.
Last month I finished reading Orbital by Samantha Harvey, a nonconventional novel that follows the mission of six astronauts at the International Space Station. These voyagers circle the globe sixteen times in a twenty-four-hour period, with each revolution providing Harvey with an opportunity to wax poetic about the splendor of our planet as seen from space: the neon-green auroras shimmering above the atmosphere, the festooning swirl of tropical storms over the ocean, the break of day spilling across the dark curvature of the earth. This lyrical description of the earth is certainly the strength of the book and indeed its reason for existence. The characters themselves are forgettable, there is little plot, and narrative tension is almost entirely absent. For this reason, Orbital isn’t really a novel. I instead see it as a non-fiction love letter to our planet, with Harvey pointing out, in one passage, the tenuousness of this vessel through which we traverse the expanse of space. We are the caretakers but have done a poor job of tending to the garden. The planet, Harvey writes, is an “unbounded place, a suspended jewel so shockingly bright.” She continues with a meditation on environmental degradation: “Can we not stop tyrannizing and destroying and ransacking and squandering this one thing on which our lives depend?” The perspective of the astronauts, floating above the atmosphere, gives the reader a window into both the beauty and fragility of the earth.
It is a sobering thought that the world we know is undergoing unprecedented stress due to climate change, air and water contamination, and deforestation. Birds, in particular, have suffered, with some estimates suggesting that nearly half of the world’s bird species are in decline, with one in eight species at risk of extinction. I hope that the bright jewel that Harvey speaks of remains bright through Harper’s lifetime and beyond. Admittedly, this is an uncertain outcome at best, hinging as it does on both collective political will and a transition to yet to be invented technologies that make energy usage more sustainable. Even as I, as a Millennial, advocate for environmental policies that benefit our progeny, I pray that the sense of wonder I instill in Harper will translate into her own passion to safeguard the earth and its treasures. When she hears a birdsong, I want her to understand that such things, though beautiful in their simplicity, should not be taken for granted. Once a species is gone, it is lost forever. Harper’s spiritual formation will highlight the importance of being a good steward of the created order. I want her to believe, when she is old enough to comprehend such things, that respecting and conserving nature demonstrates respect for the Creator, from which all things flow.
Among the joys of parenting are watching the subtle changes in your child as they age. In the past week, I have noticed fleeting moments during Harper’s sleep when a smile appears on her face. Such smiles are involuntary and are not a response to external stimuli, unlike the active smiling with which we are familiar. Still, Harper’s smile is a sort of foreshadowing of days to come when her emotional palette will expand to encompass moments of genuine joy, including the magic of discovering new sights, sounds, and tastes. I want her to have the same disposition as Harvey’s astronauts in Orbital, who take in the bold, beautiful world from the suspension of outer space and come to regard her as a kind of cosmic mother. When Harper is old enough, my hope is that the first bird she sees and registers will inspire in her this same deep wonder that I experienced as a child, romping through the forest in search of its hidden creatures.