Write Through Doors

This post is dedicated to my mother, Helen Eisenberg, in honor of Mother’s Day.

I love “firsts”.  They’re anti-boredom.  A reason to pay attention.

Last week I saw something I’d never seen, when visiting the Toledo Zoo.  A mother monkey was teaching her baby to climb the inside of the cage next to her.    She would pull her baby off her chest, firmly place by baby’s grip onto the wire of the cage, then quickly climb away. The baby would hang on while protesting with little eep-eep sounds, rush to catch the mom, and climb on her chest again.  They did it over and over again, mother pushing the baby to learn, the baby protesting:  the climbing practice show.

I then flew to Florida to visit with my mom and dad on Mothers Day.  Early that morning, before our bagel and lox breakfast,  I saw a great blue heron feeding her five huge baby birds in Wakodahatchee Wetlands on Jog Rd., near my parent’s house in Delray Beach, Florida.  I love to jog  there when I visit my folks (at least I’m using the road correctly, I figure) but I’ve never seen so many HUGE nesting birds before, in a relatively flimsy looking bush.

Then, one more first.  On the way back from Florida, the pilot came on and said “people on the right side of the plane look out:  you can see the space shuttle taking off!”  There it was, in my window, gleaming and rising above the clouds next to me, just as exciting as the baby herons feeding or monkey learning to climb.  The shuttle mission?  Another type of tending–to fix the Hubble Telescope.