I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

As a young parent, one of my favorite rituals was to awaken my sleepy eye children out of

bed.

Filed downstairs still in pajamas, and resting on the sofa, look out our living room window

together.

Sunlight slowly illuminated everything within the frame of our bay window.

To whatever was in sight, we'd say, good morning, good morning tree, good morning squirrel,

good morning snow.

It was my way of helping them enter into the day.

It eventually turned into a game whose aim was to exhaust what was seen.

And of course, there was no end to seeing.

We'd spar back and forth.

Good morning rooftops, good morning cars, good morning neighbor, good morning neighbor's

dog.

Admittedly, I wasn't being so original.

The litany of naming was a riff off the children's book classic Good Night Moon.

The world comes into being in both consciousness and in form when it's spoken.

I wanted my children to engage in acts of observation, acts that beckon them to a pitch of noticing

and careful attention.

I wanted them to become wonder filled, to receive and admire the ground beneath them,

to come to love and revere the world of ten thousand things, to wake up to the aliveness

of our precious life, its inhabitants and creatures.

...