She Discovered the Sky

The young teaches the old

On an unusually warm late afternoon on a porch surrounded by the last of a good meal and wine, we look into each other’s eyes, I bounce her on my knees, her curling toes and strong legs pressing hard against me, showing off her new found power. Not long ago, there was none of this. No kicking legs, and no clear eyes to see—only the blurry forms of an infant’s sight. Now, sharing an afternoon with family, she sees me and she is finding her footing, her grounding to the world.

“I think she just discovered the sky.”

These were the words my daughter-in-law wrote to me in a text a few days ago along with a close-up photograph of my granddaughter looking with wonderment to the blue above. The two had been on a walk with the baby in the stroller. The sky had always been there and she had been there with it, but only in that moment, when her five-month-old eyes could see more clearly and the time was right did she truly experience the sky.

Every day is new. Every day a different discovery. And every day I am a different grandfather—her Papa—than I was before. As she changes, I change. Sometimes I’m better at this job, sometimes not so much. Sometimes she cries when I hold her. Sometimes her smile is as big as the world. But always, time moves on. I get older and she discovers something new. So much more to discover and only so much time for me to watch it all happen. Someday we’ll take a walk together. Someday we’ll find a four-leaf clover in the grass. Someday we’ll sing a song together. Someday she’ll kick a ball and I’ll kick it back. Someday we’ll put toes in the sand at the sea. But time keeps on and someday time will run out.

In early morning darkness when I work in the small shed where I write and read, through the window I witness the day’s emergence. It’s the awakening of the sky, its birth from the blackness of night to a dim blue, then a light blue, a cobalt blue, azure, and the baby blue the full sunrise brings.

I see the sky differently now, somehow. Every phase of it. And tomorrow when time has taken yet another bite from both of our lives, the sky will still be there, for her young eyes and for my old. We will share it, this big sky, each through our own singular view, each our own singular discovery, yet together as time delivers us to another day.

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Photo by Brett Sayles