I intend to know you better

Over the past few weeks, little jewels began to appear on our fence line. Pale green gems, about an inch long, were attaching themselves to the underside of the top rails. After consultation with our neighbor, we learned that the gilt-edged capsules were monarch butterfly chrysalides* (*plural of chrysalis; also new favorite word). These unbelievably beautiful baubles look as if a masterful painter of Fabergé eggs had taken the tiniest brush, dipped it in gold, and embellished them solely for delight. We check on them every morning and wonder why they are so pretty and try to guess when each will emerge by noting which chrysalides have darkened, revealing the body of the butterfly underneath.

Learning what to call these inchoate backyard inhabitants deepened our affection for them. Knowing that they were monarchs, not just any old bug, enhanced our care and consideration. We now feel protective and compassionate toward them; we worry about their welfare; we wonder about their future as the weather turns. None of this would have happened if we had never learned what they were called. Because we’ve rarely left our home this year, we’ve observed so much more of the natural world and been driven to find out the proper names of our neighboring flora and fauna. I now know that a Carolina wren is the possessive little bird that chirps at us on the deck every evening. I learned that red-tailed hawks were the ones performing a dramatic mating dance in the neighbor’s garden. The weed that gives me so much grief is ground ivy, and the big spider that tries to trap me every morning by spinning a web over our front walk is an orange marbled orb weaver.

We have also tried to extend this practice to the human beings in our neighborhood. I am far from a natural socialite, but in pandemic life, I have suddenly become the chatty neighbor out on a walk. (I use the funny blonde baby on my hip as an ice-breaker.) Now that I know so many neighbors’ names, I see them and their houses differently. I see the whole street with a refreshed gaze, refocused by attachment.

I’m a broken record, but naming strikes me as a critical skill of storytellers. Without a curiosity for names and an attending capacity to remember them, our stories grow pale, unmemorable, weak. Our relationships with others depend on our knowledge of names. A storyteller necessarily has a great facility for forming and preserving relationships between creatures. In contrast, a storyteller who was uninterested in names would be a poor storyteller indeed. To ignore the names of people, places, and things indicates a serious deficit of curiosity, which often results in a deficit of respect. 

The desire to learn a name and remember it speaks to a deep well of intention. Inquiring about a name says, I intend to know you better, whether you are a fabulous insect or a new acquaintance. The best way to do that is to begin by knowing your name.

(Letter from this week’s Story Matters, the email I get to write for work.)

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Meanwhile, this little dude continues to be extremely entertaining and cute. He’s 16 months old and has lots of opinions about how the household should be run. Specifically, if he got to enact his policy mandates, he would subsist exclusively on a diet of (expensive) berries, pull all things out of all cabinets at all hours of the day, never be put in his “independent play” room, walk to the park every day, and dance slowly to Sufjan in the morning, without interruption.

We had to shave him some weeks ago, because he decided that his new sleep routine involved pulling his hair out by the fistful. I miss his flowing flaxen hair! Maybe it will grow back.

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