Crazy Old Liz

(I started writing this a couple months back and am just finishing it now. It is so much fun to finally have some time to catch up on my writing! So please forgive the spring reference when it is really full-on summer!)

I smile at the weirdest things. It’s spring now, and because of that, my eyes are constantly searching for new discoveries of plant growth or of critter activity. The grass keeps getting greener. I smile. New flowers (not exactly new, as I have seen them year after year, but nonetheless growing up afresh) peek through the ground. I smile. The first bees of the season are reappearing in my yard. They get an extra big smile! Pesky chipmunks are invading my birdfeeder again, swinging by their tightly gripped little toenails while extracting every seed possible. Who cares if the birdseed should be eaten by birds? Those little guys with their go-to attitude make me smile. Ooo, it’s a red-winged black bird, sitting on a reed in a roadside ditch: a sure sign of spring! You guessed it, I’m smiling. You know what? It doesn’t matter how many of those birds I see on any given road trip, I can’t help smiling at each one of them. Each sighting of plant or animal seems to me like a whisper from God. I seem to hear Him saying, “Take notice, Liz. This is a present, crafted by my hand, for you to appreciate. Look closely and truly see the intricacies of my creation. And ENJOY it!”

(Taken from the passenger seat)

So I smile, but I know I look like a crazy woman, because ordinary things in the world around me catch my eye. It’s almost impossible to take a walk with me, because I can’t help stopping for a mushroom here or a dragonfly there. I see them all. My eyes have reconfigured themselves to notice what most would consider to be minutia. Forget about texting and driving; I have a hard enough time just processing the beautiful world around me while driving. You should hear my self-talk when I’m alone in the car. It goes something like this, “Ooo – is that a hawk? Stop it, Liz, you need to look at the road….Those clouds are so amazingly cool! Seriously, keep your eyes where they belong, girl….” You get the idea.  I’m entirely messed up. (But I do I smile a lot.)

And here’s the deal:

I don’t stop at smiling. I also take pictures. (Not while I’m driving, thankfully.)

I take pictures of the weirdest things. More accurately, I suppose, I weirdly take pictures of ordinary things. There isn’t anything weird about a flower or a weed or rhubarb or a bee or tiny bug or bark on a tree or a slug or a mud puddle or RAIN DROPS (one of my obsessions), but really – why take pictures of them?  What do you gain by having 20 pictures of the same flower? Or what is the purpose of a whole album’s worth of creepy spider pictures? Or what did a grasshopper do to deserve a close-up? Or what in the world are you doing, Liz, lying on your back under a daffodil? Or the biggest question: what do you DO with all those pictures, Liz?

My husband, sweet man that he is, cannot figure out any reason why a person who is not a professional photographer should have 36,550 pictures backed up on her external hard drive. I can’t really explain it either, but I do go visit them like old friends. I feel connected to something deep and eternal when I look at a picture I took last year of a bee reveling in a crocus. I marvel at just how intricate a tiny, slippery snail really is. I delight at the remembrance of a dragonfly that lighted long enough for me to capture its iridescent wings.

In the end, it’s a cheap obsession. With the advent of digital cameras, I don’t have to process my pictures in order to enjoy them. I share them on Facebook, which costs nothing. (I’m sure there are people who block my posts out of sheer exhaustion at viewing the every day stream of pictures I put out there.) I even occasionally print a card or a photo for a friend or family member with whom a certain picture resonates. And that makes me smile.