Behind the Puddle

There are mornings at the puddle when I think I know what is going to happen before anything has really happened at all. I know which direction the geese usually come from, where the herons prefer to stand, which feeders empty first, and about what time certain visitors tend to appear. After watching the same little piece of the world for months, familiarity begins to feel a lot like knowing.

But familiarity and knowing are not exactly the same thing.

I have watched a visitor arrive and assumed it would only stay for a moment, only to find it still there hours later. I have settled into my chair expecting a familiar face to remain nearby, then looked up to discover it had quietly gone. There have been mornings when I thought something was struggling because it was behaving differently than I expected, only to learn that different was simply different.

Apparently, paying attention does not make me particularly good at predicting what happens next.

The Lone Goose has probably taught me that more than anyone. There are days it comes to the edge of the puddle, eats a little cracked corn, settles down, and stays long enough that its presence becomes part of the day. Other times it appears, looks around, and leaves before I have decided whether I should refill my coffee.

I never really know which kind of visit it is going to be.

Stanley and Stella taught me something similar. For a while they became familiar enough that I started looking for them, recognizing where they stood and noticing when one arrived without the other. I learned their habits well enough to notice changes, but never well enough to make them come back simply because I was waiting.

The Green Heron may have taught me the opposite lesson. It was here before I really knew what I was looking at, probably more than once, and I had not yet learned enough to recognize it. Once I knew how to see it, I started noticing things that had likely been happening without me all along.

There is something humbling about realizing how much of the world continues whether I understand it or not.

Sometimes I catch myself watching one of them and thinking, stay a little longer. There is no reason it should matter. I am not doing anything with the extra few minutes except sitting there watching, but apparently wanting more time does not always require a practical explanation.

I just am not finished yet.

Of course, the bird does not know that. The goose does not know. The squirrel certainly does not appear particularly concerned about whether I have had enough time to watch whatever ridiculous thing it has decided to do that morning.

They leave when they leave.

I have also learned that worrying does not give me any additional authority. When something sits longer than usual, walks differently, disappears for several days, or chooses a place I would not have chosen for it, I start wondering whether something is wrong. Sometimes something probably is, but many times I am simply measuring another creature’s behavior against the version of it I had learned to expect.

Knowing someone’s patterns can help us notice.

It does not mean the pattern belongs to us.

There have been days when the most useful thing I could do was simply remain nearby. I could not make something eat, move, return, stay, or leave. I could watch, pay attention, make the space reasonably safe, offer what I could, and let whatever was happening belong to the one actually living it.

That sounds much simpler than it sometimes feels.

One morning, I was watching several visitors at once. I kept shifting my attention from the puddle to the feeders and back again, trying to keep track of everything happening around me. Somewhere in the middle of all that noticing, one of them left.

I did not see it happen.

I knew it had been there. I knew when I noticed it was gone. What I did not know was exactly when one became the other.

For some reason, that stayed with me.

There are so many moments around this puddle that I have photographed because I wanted evidence that they happened. There are others I never managed to capture at all. And then there are those strange little spaces between the two, when I know something was here because I experienced its presence, even though I cannot tell you exactly when that presence became an absence.

Maybe I do not need to know.

The puddle has never promised me that paying attention would allow me to predict what happens next. It has only given me the opportunity to notice what is here while it is here. Some visitors stay long enough to become familiar, some return after I have stopped expecting them, and some disappear before I realize I was watching them for the last time.

Loving their presence has never given me the ability to make them stay.

Perhaps that is why the ordinary mornings matter as much as they do.

I am beginning to understand that there is a difference between holding on to something and being present with it. One tries to control how long the moment lasts. The other simply recognizes that the moment is happening.

So I will probably keep looking toward the puddle when I open the door. I will keep checking the familiar places, learning the patterns, worrying occasionally when something changes, and hoping certain visitors stay just a little longer. I will keep taking too many photographs and occasionally missing the very thing I was trying so hard to see.

But maybe I am getting better at something else. For whatever time they stay, I can notice. And perhaps, sometimes, that is enough.