There are rare bird sightings.

Then there are rare teenager sightings.

Summer has become a complicated choreography of music theater, birthday parties, sleepovers, concerts, camps, and friends. Leo’s calendar has somehow become fuller than mine, and Kelly and I have started joking that if we’d like to spend time with our own kid, we should probably check the schedule and make a reservation. They drift through the house carrying laundry, water bottles, and stories from adventures we’ve only heard about in pieces before disappearing again. It’s exactly what teenagers are supposed to do. Still, every once in a while I catch myself lingering in the kitchen a little longer, hoping for one more conversation before the next event begins.

A few mornings ago, after getting home sometime around midnight from a Benson Boone concert, Leo decided to skip music theater. Sleep had finally won. By late morning they had eaten breakfast, rubbed the exhaustion from their eyes, and announced they were going to mow the lawn. It felt like one of those ordinary summer victories that parents quietly celebrate. The grass would get cut, Leo was home for a few hours, and maybe we’d cross one thing off the endless list that seems to grow faster than the tomatoes.

They had been outside for maybe five minutes when the back door flew open.

“Hey, Mol! Can I get my phone?”

I didn’t say my first thought out loud.

Absolutely not.

You don’t even have phone privileges right now. You’re mowing the lawn. I could already see the whole chain reaction unfolding in my head. Phone becomes texting. Texting becomes scrolling. Scrolling becomes, “Oops…I forgot I was mowing.”

Then Leo finished the sentence.

“There’s this huge mayfly, and I really want to take a picture to send to Dad.”

My entire internal courtroom quietly adjourned.

“Oh.”

Of course.

“Here.”

“And then come show me.”

The lawn mower sat silent while we spent the next twenty minutes admiring a bug.

Not just glancing at it.

Really looking.

Leo pointed out its wings. We wondered how something so awkward-looking could be so intricate up close. They snapped pictures from every angle, trying to capture details that disappear if you only give something a passing glance. The grass still needed cut. The afternoon wasn’t getting any longer. There were other places to be.

None of that seemed to matter.

Standing there in the yard, I realized this was the very thing I’ve been hoping to cultivate, though I don’t think I knew how to name it until that moment.

Wonder.

Not achievement.

Not productivity.

Not getting the lawn finished before lunch.

Wonder.

Lately, in the evenings, I’ve been reading The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram aloud to Kelly. Abram writes about entering into relationship with the more-than-human world, about remembering that our lives unfold not only among other people but among maples, robins, moss, insects, rivers, stones, and wind. He invites the reader to imagine what changes when we stop seeing nature as scenery and begin meeting it as community. I keep reading passages out loud, then lowering the book and staring into the backyard as though the cardinal on the fence might have something to add.

Apparently Leo had already been reading the same lesson.

A few days before the mayfly, I found an inchworm inching across the kitchen floor. Old Molly probably would have reached for a paper towel without giving it much thought. Instead, I crouched down and picked it up as gently as I could. I watched the tiny body gather itself into an arch before stretching forward again. I noticed the impossible number of little legs doing their quiet work. Then I carried it outside and placed it in the grass.

Nothing miraculous happened.

The inchworm didn’t thank me.

We didn’t become friends.

I simply walked back inside feeling ever so slightly different than when I’d walked out.

I’ve started noticing birds the same way.

After dropping Leo off on Pittsburgh’s West End, I usually find myself waiting at the light I affectionately call the hundred-hour light. It’s one of those intersections that seems designed to test the limits of human patience. Normally I spend the wait complaining about traffic and wondering why I didn’t choose another route.

The other day I noticed a pigeon.

Have you ever really looked at a pigeon?

Not the general idea of a pigeon.

An actual pigeon.

Its neck shimmered with colors that didn’t seem possible. Bright greens melted into deep purples, then suddenly flashed pink when it turned its head toward the sun. Somehow we’ve collectively decided pigeons are boring while carrying around tiny rainbows on their shoulders.

So I watched.

At first I wondered what it was pecking at on the sidewalk. Crumbs? French fries? A Dorito? Then my mind wandered into far more important questions. Do pigeons have favorite chips? Would one turn its beak up at plain potato chips while holding out for Cool Ranch? I had become completely invested in the dietary preferences of an urban bird.

Then the pigeon picked up a small stick.

It flew beneath the bridge and disappeared into the steel beams overhead. A moment later it emerged, flew farther toward the middle of the overpass, and disappeared again beneath another support.

I remember smiling.

I had just watched someone carrying groceries home.

Just then the light turned green.

For the first time in my life, I was annoyed that traffic had started moving.

I wanted to stay for the rest of the show.

It has me wondering how much of life I’ve been missing because I assumed I already knew what I was looking at. A pigeon. An inchworm. A mayfly. Lawn mowing. Traffic. The ordinary pieces of an ordinary day. Maybe attention is less about finding extraordinary things than it is about allowing ordinary things enough time to become extraordinary.

I think that’s what Leo gave me that morning.

Not a lesson about insects.

A reminder that wonder has terrible timing.

It interrupts lawn mowing.

It makes you late.

It refuses to be efficient.

It asks you to stop what you’re doing because there is a mayfly worth admiring, right here, right now.

Standing in the yard watching Leo crouch beside that insect with their phone held inches away, I realized something had quietly shifted between us. For years I’ve been trying to teach them how to move through the world. That morning, they returned the favor.

Maybe that’s one of the unexpected gifts of parenting. If we’re lucky, there comes a day when the roles blur just enough that you realize your children are growing you, too.

And maybe that’s what summer has been trying to teach me all along.

Not to hurry.

Not to accomplish more.

Not even to slow down for the sake of slowing down.

Simply to notice.

Because sometimes the most important thing you’ll do all day is postpone mowing the lawn long enough to fall in love with a mayfly.