Appreciating The Little Things

Yesterday I was in my garden picking lettuce. We have the most amazing crop of lettuce we’ve ever had this year. As I pulled out a batch of it, I noticed a tiny, red ladybug. It was nestled in the folds of a tender, green leaf near the root of the plant.

“Come on, little ladybug,” I said to the insect. “Hop out. Find a new home.”

I gently shook the bouquet of lettuce and the bug flew out, thankfully, and flitted away to another plant.

Seeing that ladybug took me back for a moment to my childhood, and to memories of my mother, “Honey”, who taught me to be observant and to appreciate the beauty of the world around us. She always was drawing my attention to something incredible: to a beautiful, fluffy, undulating, cumulus, cloud formation; to the vivid, perfectly placed colors -- orange, yellow, and black – in a Monarch butterfly’s wings; to the intricacy of frozen, ice crystals on a window pane in winter; to a wiggly, Earth worm frantically squirming its way back under dark soil; to an autumn leaf wrought with color – orange, red, and deep green, the dark veins a roadmap of its own. More than once my mother would caress a purple, pansy blossom and coo at it with admiration.

“Just look at that little face,” she’d instruct, pointing out its features. I cannot, to this day, look at a pansy without thinking of my mother.

So it is, then, that I do look closely at the beauty around me. I do appreciate the little things: the energetic spin of a ruby-throated hummingbird’s wings at a feeder outside, the flicker of sunlight glistening, diamond-like, on a waterfall that splashes into the Koi pond, and the spark of joy in my German shepherd’s amber eyes when I say, “Walk?”

I’m fortunate to have been taught that lesson – to appreciate the little things. It allows me to stop still in this busy life and take notice. It helps me to understand that amid all the hatred and strife that exists in our world, that there is beauty still, intricate, fragile, fresh, and tenacious. I’m left to wonder about the trite, age-old question, “Does a tree that falls in a forest somewhere indeed make a sound if we are not there to hear?” Does beauty cease to exist if we don’t notice? I’m not ready to let that happen, so like my “teacher”, my mom, I plan to continue appreciating the little things.