sara + h
snail girl
Astrid knows that we are part of something larger than ourselves.
In the garden, she watches earthworms weave around tall poles of lima beans, and coaxes them into wriggling onto her palms. At play in the sandbox, she is distracted by what’s happening on the sidewalk, where an army of ants builds a castle, carrying leaves twice their size to a place beside the mailbox. And when a toad appears on the porch one night after a hard summer’s rain, she kneels by the window and wonders where it came from, and hopes it will still be there in the morning.
Nature’s tiny things teach us what it means to be gentle, patient, and kind. When Astrid grows up, she may study ornithology or anthropology. She may tend bar, or build a skyscraper on Mars. We cannot know what she will do, but we already know who she will be. Astrid will hold up traffic to let a turtle cross the road. She will shed a tear when, inevitably, a squirrel darts in front of the car. And when she spots a snail on a soft forest path, she will marvel at its extra-terrestrial tentacles and its beautiful spiral shell, before gently tucking it into its mossy green bed.
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