Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer's Search for Wonder in the Natural World Read Online Free Page B
Author: Leigh Ann Henion
certain, but does being a good mother mean devoting every drop of my being to my child, or does it mean being true to my spirit in a way that illustrates that there is more than one way to live a good life? Motherhood affects everything, but does it have to change everything about who I am and what I choose to pursue?
Archer and I are forming a relationship word by word, day by day. And it seems like embarking on a pilgrimage might just be a way for me to do my part in our partnership. I give to my son of myself, as I hope he will someday choose to give to me, but he is his own being. I am my own being. And I fight the idea that my life is no longer my own. I have to think like this because, as Archer grows, it will be increasingly true. I have given birth to a person with free will and my success as a mother, my personal gauge of success, will be how far, how brazenly, he ventures into the world—coming back to me as I will always return to him.
But since his birth, my world has collapsed into a series of rooms with central heat and a supplemental woodstove. I’ve been living in a black hole, feeling guilty that my curiosity—my need to venture afield—isn’t going to go away. The list of must-see natural phenomena I compiled after witnessing the monarch migration seems to read like a map that might lead me back to myself, a way of fortifying the natural-world connection I made in the presence of butterflies.
I need to take a leap of faith. For my sanity. For my marriage. For my son. I want to look back in ten years and think
I can’t believe this is my life
in a good way, a wondrously astounded way, rather than a
woe-is-me
way. I don’t want to wait and wait and subconsciously resent my life or, worst of all, my son—my beautiful, blessed boy. That, perhaps more than any of the
tsk-tsk
looks and comments I am opening myself to from the outside world, is the greatest danger of not embarking on the quest I’ve dreamed up. I am going to pilgrimage to some of the world’s most dazzling phenomena. I don’t know how I’ll make it happen, but I am going to do it.
When Archer suckles one breast and refuses the other during our ritual one morning, I feel a bit rejected and relieved. The next day, when I offer him my milk, he laughs at me as I lie on the bed, offering up my body. He makes the American Sign Language symbol for milk, a grasping motion reminiscent of milking a cow. Archer wants a bottle. He is weaned. I am inexplicably saddened. I will miss his nuzzles, the way he patted my breast when he was hungry.
He has inspired me to marvel at our joined bodies the way I yearn to once again wonder at all the world. But, now that he is eating solid food, it is time for me to start at the top of my phenomena list. I am going to reimagine my life by doing the unimaginable, and I am taking my husband with me. We need more than a vacation. We need rejuvenation, electrification.
So, with Archer happily settled into a room at my parents’ house, Matt and I head for the airport. We’re thankfully financed by a travel magazine assignment, my first since Archer’s birth. My father holds my son in the crook of his arm, and Archer waves good-bye, repeating his favorite new word: “Go! Go! Go!”
The syllables rain down like a blessing.
CHAPTER 2
BIOLUMINESCENCE, PUERTO RICO
February/March 2011
TWO DAYS LATER, MATT AND I ARE STANDING IN A NARROW AL LEYWAY IN Isabel Segunda—on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico—when a stranger approaches to tell us that he’s channeling the power of the ocean. Crazy? Maybe. But we’re here on a similarly far-fetched quest—to swim in a celestial sea. I tell the man, who introduces himself as Charlie the Wavemaster, that the Milky Way will soon crackle and shimmer as it slips through my fingers. Bits of stardust will cling to my hair.
I hope Vieques’s Mosquito Bay, or Bio Bay, will be as grand as I’m imagining. Plankton-induced bioluminescence—which appears to mirror stars
Archer and I are forming a relationship word by word, day by day. And it seems like embarking on a pilgrimage might just be a way for me to do my part in our partnership. I give to my son of myself, as I hope he will someday choose to give to me, but he is his own being. I am my own being. And I fight the idea that my life is no longer my own. I have to think like this because, as Archer grows, it will be increasingly true. I have given birth to a person with free will and my success as a mother, my personal gauge of success, will be how far, how brazenly, he ventures into the world—coming back to me as I will always return to him.
But since his birth, my world has collapsed into a series of rooms with central heat and a supplemental woodstove. I’ve been living in a black hole, feeling guilty that my curiosity—my need to venture afield—isn’t going to go away. The list of must-see natural phenomena I compiled after witnessing the monarch migration seems to read like a map that might lead me back to myself, a way of fortifying the natural-world connection I made in the presence of butterflies.
I need to take a leap of faith. For my sanity. For my marriage. For my son. I want to look back in ten years and think
I can’t believe this is my life
in a good way, a wondrously astounded way, rather than a
woe-is-me
way. I don’t want to wait and wait and subconsciously resent my life or, worst of all, my son—my beautiful, blessed boy. That, perhaps more than any of the
tsk-tsk
looks and comments I am opening myself to from the outside world, is the greatest danger of not embarking on the quest I’ve dreamed up. I am going to pilgrimage to some of the world’s most dazzling phenomena. I don’t know how I’ll make it happen, but I am going to do it.
When Archer suckles one breast and refuses the other during our ritual one morning, I feel a bit rejected and relieved. The next day, when I offer him my milk, he laughs at me as I lie on the bed, offering up my body. He makes the American Sign Language symbol for milk, a grasping motion reminiscent of milking a cow. Archer wants a bottle. He is weaned. I am inexplicably saddened. I will miss his nuzzles, the way he patted my breast when he was hungry.
He has inspired me to marvel at our joined bodies the way I yearn to once again wonder at all the world. But, now that he is eating solid food, it is time for me to start at the top of my phenomena list. I am going to reimagine my life by doing the unimaginable, and I am taking my husband with me. We need more than a vacation. We need rejuvenation, electrification.
So, with Archer happily settled into a room at my parents’ house, Matt and I head for the airport. We’re thankfully financed by a travel magazine assignment, my first since Archer’s birth. My father holds my son in the crook of his arm, and Archer waves good-bye, repeating his favorite new word: “Go! Go! Go!”
The syllables rain down like a blessing.
CHAPTER 2
BIOLUMINESCENCE, PUERTO RICO
February/March 2011
TWO DAYS LATER, MATT AND I ARE STANDING IN A NARROW AL LEYWAY IN Isabel Segunda—on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico—when a stranger approaches to tell us that he’s channeling the power of the ocean. Crazy? Maybe. But we’re here on a similarly far-fetched quest—to swim in a celestial sea. I tell the man, who introduces himself as Charlie the Wavemaster, that the Milky Way will soon crackle and shimmer as it slips through my fingers. Bits of stardust will cling to my hair.
I hope Vieques’s Mosquito Bay, or Bio Bay, will be as grand as I’m imagining. Plankton-induced bioluminescence—which appears to mirror stars
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