A Closer Look

In the afternoon haze, Bug and I walk the dog up the cul-de-sac.  He runs, squealing over the blacktop as Fenway lopes along behind. Suddenly, Bug stops, breathing hard.

“Do you want to touch the ivy, Mommy?”  I look where he is pointing. A froth spills over the top of the neighbor’s fence, the bubbling green corsage of delicate, airy leaves.

“How did you know it was ivy?” I ask.

He shrugs. “It just looks like it.” I consider this. This is unlike any I’ve seen before. It lacks that oiled, thick appearance and the deep green of forests. This is something with almost triangular leaves dancing on a light breeze.

“Can we touch it together?” I ask. We approach, each reaching to stroke a thin, veined tissue.  

“Oh!” I pull back. “It bit my finger!” Now the dog is interested, too, snuffling closer. Only now do I notice that all the leaves are facing outward, their limbs covered in a clever disguise. No one would have known if Mata Hari had smuggled knives in her skirts. With more care, we lift the demure chin of one leaf. Tiny thorns prickle along the spines and down the stems.

“Now, why would this ivy plant have prickers on it?”

“To hurt you?” Bug guesses.

“Maybe. A plant’s job is to grow and survive. I guess hurting me might keep me from picking it. How else might those thorns help a plant grow?”

“Hmm.” Bug puts his finger to his chin and squints his eyes in the perfect caricature of a professor. The dog still pants at the end of her leash.

After a moment, I ask, “How does ivy grow? How is it different from something that doesn’t have prickers, like that grass over there?”

“It climbs!” he says. His eyes are wide open. “Maybe the prickers help it hold onto the fence so it can climb up!”

“That sure could be it,” I say. We look together at the buds fuzzing to life with tiny leaves unfurling from their marrow.

Later, at home, we have brushes and big paper and watercolors spread out in the living room. “I am painting grass, and here is the water in the grass. Here is the rain coming down from the sky.” Bug narrates his strokes, painting brown soil down under the grass and broad blue swirls in the sky. He begins making an eerie whistling noise. “The wind is blowing all around, blowing the raindrops.”

Over in the corner of the page, I swipe my green and brown lines, tiny and careful things. I paint quietly, waiting for the image to reveal itself.

“What’s that, Mommy?”

“What does it look like?”

Bug pauses, his brush poised above the page, and gazes at my corner for a minute. At first he shrugs, looks away, then looks back. “It’s ivy!” He says, a grin brightening his face. “And a fence!”

“How could you tell?” I ask.

“I don’t know. It just looks like it.” His attention is back on his own painting. And then it is elsewhere altogether and we are putting the paints away, rinsing out our brushes.

When we walk the dog the next morning, Bug sees the spilling life at the fence again. “Let’s look at the ivy again and go home and paint it!” he says.

“That’s a great idea,” I say. “While we’re out here, let’s see what other plants we can find.”

We traipse through the grass, dew clinging like kisses to our sneakers. From the brush explodes a flowering mystery. Ghostly blossoms extend purple-gray hairs 360 degrees from cotton spindles.

“Do you want to touch it?” Bug asks.

“Let’s touch it together,” I say. We approach the furred wonder as its damp fibers reach out to greet us.