The students who walk into my classroom are unique.
They are curious.
They are singers and songwriters.
They are compassionate.
They are mysterious.
They just are.
And I am thankful.
I wrote this small piece of fiction to help me understand these things.
The Heartbeat of a Whale
In a place that hadn’t been seen by many people, she hadn’t been seen by many people either.
The Iñuit people knew from the beginning that every snowflake that falls from the sky is unique.
No two snowflakes have ever been alike, are ever alike, or ever will be alike.
The crystals that form and make the snowflake are so sensitive to the conditions around them that a breeze blowing over the ice, a cloud passing between the sun and the earth, or the vibrations from the heartbeat of a whale surfacing on the waters of the Chukchi Sea can change them into something new.
Taki’s mother and father knew that she was like a snowflake.
On the first day of her life, she was swaddled in a warm blanket in her crib.
Her Grandmother had sewed the three Arctic whales into that red blanket with yellow thread the color of the morning sunrise over the waters.
"With the beluga whale, I hope curiosity and song into the life of the baby," she had whispered, "For the beluga look quizzical in the way they hold their heads and can sing songs that cause us to call them the canaries of the sea.
With the narwhal whale, I hope compassion and empathy into the life of the baby, for the narwhal will place the tip of it's own hornlike tooth into the broken tooth of another narwhal to ease it’s suffering and pain.
And with the bowhead whale, I hope mystery and endurance into the life of the baby, for the bowhead's name is Balaena mysticetus and that best describes it's wonderful ways. Because of the cold, cold Arctic water it lives longer than any other creature in the world.
As she looked up into the weathered faces of her parents with her deep brown eyes, Taki whistled a beautiful song.
No comments:
Post a Comment