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Preserving The Moment

Written by Tamra Palmer

The discovery of something precious evokes a treasured memory for Tamra Palmer.

I found something precious in my desk yesterday. It was inside an old envelope; one in which I was about to put an unpaid bill and a cheque. There was nothing on the outside to indicate it already had a purpose, so I was feeling pretty lucky to have found a spare envelope. I felt even luckier when I discovered what was inside. It was a feather. A tiny, brilliant-blue feather. “Perhaps a fairy wren,” I remembered saying when it was originally found.

The feather had been discovered four years earlier at a park one shiny spring day. My big boy was little back then, and when he raced over calling my name, I knew he had found something pretty special. His eyes were wide, his excitement tangible, his voice bubbly. “Look Mum, look! It’s a feather!” he said, as he held it up like a prize.

We examined it together. “It’s so blue,” he said. “And so tiny!” he marvelled. “It must be from a little bird. Perhaps a fairy wren,” I said. He felt the edge of the feather with his little, curled finger, cracking the seal of the fibres, resealing it again in wonder. He held it up and dropped it. We both watched it float down, see-saw-style into his cupped hands. “It’s so pretty, isn’t it, Mummy?”

He held it out to show his baby sister who was in the pram beside us. He gave her a short lecture about its origins – an instant expert on the topic. He tickled her under the chin with it until she chuckled, more to appease her hero than from actual mirth, I think. He felt it once more and then he turned and held it out to me. “Can you please look after my feather, Mummy?” I took it automatically, but he needed me to know how special it was. “Be careful with it. Don’t lose it, because it’s precious,” he insisted. “Yes it is. You’re right,” I replied.

Certainly there are times when parenting is a chore, a labour to get through until dinnertime. This was not one of those times. I had been entrusted to keep this lovely thing, to preserve the moment. Years later, the feather has lost none of its brilliance. Unlike my little boy’s fingers and curly ringlets, it hasn’t grown or changed.

The moment, too, remains the same – small, brilliant blue and precious.

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