What have you been paying attention to?

My eyes are greedy. Most of the time I am paying attention to the odd colored stone or pattern of rain streaks on the tree trunk. Sometimes my eyes let other parts of me take the lead. Yesterday on a long cloud heavy hike I began to think about inside things. I called my mother on the anniversary of my father's death. I got her answering machine and left a message. She had a house full of guests and was surrounded by family. She didn't call me back. That's the way she is and I didn't think anything about it. Then I did. It made me feel a bit mad at her a quick fleeting anger that swooshed as suddenly into realizing what a gift it has been for me that she left me un-tended as a child. I was un-tendable. I preferred consequences to compliance. I quietly let her cut my hair short like a boys when I refused to brush it wanting needing it to be unkempt. On cold days when my mother asked me to put on a sweater I'd wear it under my dress. I would give my birthday presents away to other children and cut up new clothes to make outfits for my dolls but hold on to certain tattered things and wear them years past their fitting. I only did my school work if  the teacher was kind. Some years I was no more than a mouse in the classroom and my mother let me be through it all.  The choices I made in the outside world mirrored the ones in my heart. There was nobody pulling my heart into a certain matched cultural beat. It got to figure itself out.