My children have great imaginations. I like to encourage their creativity, but sometimes I don't know what they are talking about if I haven't seen the same thing.
The other day my daughter was complaining that no one believed she had seen a cricket turn into a butterfly. When we were walking home from school a few days later she said "see there's one." We followed what looked very much like a black and white butterfly. It seemed to disappear on landing and when we moved closer we could see a grasshopper.
She pointed at it repeating "see." It wasn't a cricket, but a grasshopper, and with a little help from the Internet we were able to identify it as a banded-winged grasshopper.
It was strange to see. I'd seen them before but didn't look at them close enough to know they weren't butterflies.
My daughter looks around and notices things I often miss. She also has a great memory.
My son has a brilliant mind, but when he was younger we teased him because he didn't seem to be able to notice anything more than a few feet from his nose and within seconds he forgot all about it. His favourite places are between the covers of books and in the miniature screens of iPods and cell phones.
My husband has the eyes of a hunter, spotting birds and animals while driving, but not noticing buildings and landmarks even if he's driven past them for years.
We look for different things and we see different things. I spent some time behind the lens of a camera. I watched everything my children did through the glass lens, sometimes missing their turns while I tried to capture memories for the newspaper and others.
I probably missed a significant portion of what was going on while staring into a tunnel.
When I moved to the area I opened my eyes and saw the diversity of waterfowl and was amazed at the beauty around me. Recently pictures of strange clouds surfaced on Facebook and it wasn't long before we saw some in the sky.
I know my eyes are changing and I'll need a new prescription, maybe even bifocals, but I think my sight is actually getting better because I'm following the lead of others and paying closer attention to what they see.
I recently made a drive up north after dark. I hit a moose last fall and don't want a repeat so I try to pay more attention to the ditches and was astounded by the number of deer just a few metres from the highway.
Sometimes I have to see to believe, other times I just have to open up my eyes and amazing things come into view everywhere I turn.
