Does your child have an odd passion?
Of course, all passions are a little odd, since they generally revolve around something specific, something that you’re keenly, deeply interested in, and something that does not necessarily excite others. That’s what makes them wonderful.
My daughter loves birds. She has loved birds since she was in preschool. She likes other animals too, and has spoken about being a vet one day, but she certainly has a soft spot for birds. She draws them, she makes food for them, she puts out nesting materials for them, and she’s created little places in our garden for injured birds upon occasion, deciding the injured birds would certainly like to land and get nursed back to health in the shoe boxes that she places outside.
We get movies by mail off a rental list, and I tend to forget what I’ve put on there. So I was surprised two days ago when I received the movie Fly Away Home, about a teenage girl and her dad who raise motherless geese and then use an ultralight aircraft to teach the birds how to fly and how to migrate to Florida. It’s a good movie. The movie made me cry, and I am certainly not a crier.
After we finished the movie last night, we had a discussion about it. I knew that it was based on a true story. I asked my daughter if she’d like to write to the people involved. Later, through the magic of the internet, we learned about Operation Migration, Bill Lishman’s attempt to introduce new migratory paths for Whooping Cranes and Sandhill Cranes. His work began in the late 1980s with Canada Geese.
What will we do now? We might write to them, we might raise money for the organization, we might see what else we can do to help birds in our community. These are the quirky little passions that I want to encourage in my daughter. After all, when I was in elementary school I had a few particular interests, and these interests continue to this day – in fact, they are my multiple careers!
Image Credit: Joseph Hart