At the end of a meditation I’m listening to the teacher says, “May you be surprised by awe and wonder many a day.” I write that down in my notebook because it’s a good reminder and then carry on with the ordinary things that occupy me; work, exercise, all those little things I do to try and make and/or keep my body healthy like being outside, getting sunlight in the eyes, breathwork, language learning, food prep and consumption, self-improvement. A list of To Do items that I check off as I do them. One day often looks like the other. You could set a clock by my schedule.
A few days later, my older sister, my first brother, and his two kids come up from the hill country to visit, disrupting my routine. On their second afternoon here, after I’ve put in a few hours of work (because it seems so important to do that), I tell my twelve-year-old niece that now I’m free and if she’d like to do anything, I’m open to suggestions. After a while, when we’re in the same room again, she says, “I’m thinking about an aquarium.”
“That could be fun,” I say, getting up to go get my phone and look up options.
Deciding against the Dallas World Aquarium whose website warns that it’s Spring Break and there are likely to be lines, we gather the family up and go to the Dallas Children’s Aquarium at Fair Park.
It’s a smaller venue than the DWA, but instead of seeming diminished or lesser, it feels cozy and inviting. Not too crowded and with enough exhibits to satisfy but not overwhelm, we head in. I see colorful fish, a purple seahorse, tiny glow-in-the-dark fish who radiate their neon yellow, blues, and oranges, thick fish with open mouths and dumbfounded expressions, weedy sea dragons who look like mythical and magical creatures and seem to propel themselves by the movement of tiny, hairlike fibers.
My niece thrills at seeing the piranhas. My nephew bounces like an excited molecule from wall to wall, ecstatic about seeing axolotls. They’re characters in a game he plays or something and he jumps around saying, “axolotl” over and over again until, like a strong magnet, he manages to pull us all to the glass barrier so each of us can see them for ourselves, to count them, to acknowledge him and them, to admire their feathery gills.
At the time set for it, we attend a wildlife experience where the staff member introduces us to a rhinoceros iguana named Godzilla. I ask if the bare place between his spines is damage of some kind and she says, “No, it’s so his tail can flex.” I press my nose up to the glass and examine the iguana again with the new information to guide my thoughts; a functional design.
After Godzilla has settled back on his tree branch under the hot lamp he likes the most, we leave him be and slip through the main hall and out to Stingray Bay. A fair-sized tank lies in the center of a large, open, sunlit room. We’re advised to wash our hands before sticking them in to pet the stingrays. So we do. Then my niece, nephew, and I step up to the tank and dip our hands in the water. The cownose rays rush over, letting our fingers graze their backs. They swim away and back again. I’ve pet a ray before and these feel slimier, less rubbery than what I remember from that previous time. I love rays; stingrays and mantas. They’re like strange, water bound birds with their wings and long, thin tails. They’re sleek and elegant and beautiful. When I ask, the staff member tells me that stingrays and manta rays are in the same order but belong to different families. I nod, tucking the new knowledge away, and go back to watching the rays swim from one side of the tank to the other.
My brother buys a cup of food and lets us each take one of the fish, advising us to, “hold it like an ice cream cone,” in order to feed the stingrays. Now, they crowd over even more thickly, trying to be the lucky ray that gets the treat.
Tucking the dead fish in the circle of my fist, I sink my hand in the water. A stingray pushes its way through the other swarming rays and takes it from me, its mouth rough like the sandpaper rasp of a cat’s tongue against my skin. I laugh and say something like, “That was crazy,” or “That was cool.” And wish that each gathered ray had gotten a treat at the same time.
I go wash the fish smell off. Afterwards, shaking my hands in the open air to dry them, I stay back and, as I watch my niece and nephew in their individual ways delight in the hands-on experience with the rays, I wonder if the rays really like the interaction or if they’re just hoping to be fed. To someone who asks, the staff member says the rays like to be pet. But I still wonder.
I have mixed feelings about zoos and aquariums. I feel privileged to be able to see wild things with my own eyes, but I cringe at cages and barriers and limited habitat. Going down that track of thought leads to a complicated conversation with no one right or wrong answer. And today, but today, I don’t dwell too much on that.
Only later, after we’ve left Fair Park, do I really think about how amazing it is to be able to interact with creatures in that way. My two legs still on dry ground, the cownose rays themselves slipping through water to touch my hand, to let me touch their backs. That is a wonder-full thing to have been able to do.
The line, “I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,” from Lee Ann Womack’s song I Hope You Dance passes through my mind, bringing in a mix of memories; all the times my dad, who liked that song and always took the chance to dance when it arrived, got up to dance, the feel of snow on my face, the view of the world from the top of a mountain, the slow movement of an inchworm, the flush of stars in a dark sky location, a book that speaks directly to me, the picture from a retinal imaging scan showing me blood vessels, the optic nerve, retina, and macula of my own eyes, the break in the iguana’s spikes that allows its tail to flex, a story that makes me feel at home, the leaf-like fins of the common sea dragon, and the meditation teacher wishing awe and wonder to me. A sense of wonder that takes in the small things, a sense of wonder that takes in the momentous things. I let it filter through me.
Even after-the-fact wonder works.
And I think that it’s one thing to have awe and wonder many a day, it’s another thing to see it, to appreciate it, to recognize it, and to be surprised by it. Continually surprised by wonder.
More days later, after my visiting family has returned to their homes, I look up if stingrays like to be pet. The answer is maybe. One article I find quotes Dr. Bill Van Bonn, vice president of animal health at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium, as saying, “We know that one of the big questions with these exhibits is, ‘What does it mean for the animal?’ And we know the animal’s not going to tell us. We think we have pretty strong evidence that they don’t get anything negative out of it. In fact, there’s evidence that they do get something out of it and they seem to enjoy it.”
If that’s true, and I hope it is, that’s wonderful too.
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