We’d sometimes set out on our own, walk the trails, tiptoe over rackety bridges, looking for tadpoles in shallow pools. Other times we followed our mother, listening as she told her stories and pointed out wildflowers. Mayapple. Queen Anne’s lace. Trout lily. We watched her watching the sky, delighted in her delight when a heron set off—the majesty of its slender body, still as a reed, stretching itself into flight. She kept her eyes on the gray-blue bird as it made its way up and over our heads, followed the gigantic flap, swish, and glide. Once the heron had passed overhead and landed in some far-off tree, she’d look at us, her face pink with joy.
“There,” she’d say, “did you see that?” a bit of the sky in her voice.
As though it were magic. As though a heron in flight didn’t happen every time we came. Of course we saw it—and of course we loved it—but we were knots of children, cruel in our love for her, and this bit of kindness we could not give, asking instead, yet again, when we could leave.
“Not yet,” she would say, and then look into our faces, taking pains to remind herself that she was the mother, trying to sound the part, though the look of the child inevitably slipped through the eyes, and there was a plea there, too.
“Not yet,” she’d whisper. “Let’s find just one more.”