Because as a family with young daughters we often went to the beach where the girls followed fiddler crabs, pulled green and ruffled seaweed, and collected shells in their pails, I might have said that I’ve kept the drawing for its nostalgia. On my last visit to America, when I found it put away in a folder, I was inspired to take a photo but leave the drawing safely behind. Unexpectedly I came across the photo this week and decided that there must be a reason for its attraction other than my fondness for it as a beach memory.
Looking at it from my perspective now, I see a young girl who looks with full interest at a snail on the curve of her finger, just as the snail, whose head reaches out, shows an equal interest in the girl. Both appear to be in unspoken communication. While they inhabit the same world, I think that when my young daughter drew herself, using her pencil, a deeper insight that she felt but could not put into words came through—that she and the snail recognized they lived in a world of oneness.
My realization is, “We have an awareness of what we know; then there is a moment when we open to what we have not known, to find that we are living in a new world.”