Paying Attention

Rosemary squatted next to the gutter, watching the debris from the top of the hill make its slow swim downhill, puddle by puddle. It was still raining, not hard, but clearly water was falling from the sky, but so slowly Rosemary could almost see the individual drops hit the stream.

It had rained hard and steady during the night, which explained the sure flow in the gutter, with just enough sprinkle to keep Rosemary's private river moving.

She counted the debris, a word she had just learned from her mother. "Don't muck around in that debris," Mother had said, with that ominous tone that meant the "debris" was bound to be interesting...which it was.

A leaf, a twig, scraps of paper--just what you would expect in a city neighborhood.  Rosemary was patient and enjoyed the muted swirl of shape and color.

She'd tried to dam the steady flow, but that just left her hands dirty (and she had to admit after her mother pointed it out, smelly.) She was now wearing COVID gloves, leftovers from the pandemic, made of some thin-as-skin fabric, so she was free to catch and examine whatever floated by, hoping for a prize, a mystery, an unexpected object with a story, to add to her collection of beetle shells, torn scraps of plastic (primarily bright yellow), once a lid floating face up without taking on water. She loved her parade of detritus, a word new to her, but a word that perfectly described her hunt for the unexpected or unknown. And, it gave her the perfect answer, when some kid, or even a stranger, an adult, asked What are you doing?

"Watching," she always replied.

"For what?"

or

"Why?" 

or

"How?" (The hardest question so far, from Mrs. Crumpy down the block.)

"Like this," Rosemary had said, and exaggerated her squat, "Just like this and watching as best I can."

"Good girl," Mrs. Crumpy had said, without the usual follow up Why? (An adult question.) or That's stupid! (From another kid.) Not even a snort or a manufactured smile, or the worst, a meditative "I see..." when clearly they didn't. 

"Good girl," Mrs. Crumpy said. "You're paying attention."