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"Tell me what you notice." These were writing instructor Collen Kinder's words earlier this month. I'd been invited along with several other guests to a morning class of Oregon State University's Cascade Campus Master of Fine Arts Low Residency program. What I noticed was the aroma of pines wet with shy snow; wood smoke and the crackle of fire from the fireplace behind me; my red shirt's smooth texture on my arms making me wish I'd chosen something warmer. "Tell me what you notice."
"That the rivers here run blue instead of brown," said a woman from Ohio. 
That notice took me back to my Wisconsin roots where the Buffalo River flows brown even in the summer. I hadn't thought about the different color of rivers. My childhood meandering stream (named by the French for the large bison that once roamed there) often flooded in the spring and where the water raced across the road, the county later poured a concrete section to keep the road from washing out. During high water it was always a bit of a scare as we approached that river crossing.
One fall day the saddle on my horse slipped as she galloped across that piece of concrete, her shoes clattering. What I noticed that day was the way horse's white and sorrel hair swirled in sweat on her chest, the tug of leather letting me loose between her surging legs, and my sister's cry of alarm. I was twelve years old. Those were the last things I noticed that day before my head hit the concrete.
As I came out of the coma in the second week, my memory unlocks two incidents. One was my frantic and frustrating effort to tell my parents who hovered around the hospital bed not to blame the horse. She was green-broke and the saddle we'd put on her didn't fit right and so had slid around her belly when she lurched trying to catch up with my sister's mount, the action of saddle and slipping child frightening her into yet greater speed.
"Don't blame the horse," I said.
"You want a drink of water?" My dad's response.
"No, I don't want you to blame Sally. It was the saddle."
"You can't have a pillow," my mom says. "You have to lay flat."
"Who's talking pillows? Where's the horse? Is she ok?"
"What's she saying?" My dad again.
"It's all garbled." My mom, shaking her head.
How can they not understand me? I drifted back under.
A second notice came a few days later when faceless forms stood by my bed. I saw the blue suitcoat of the doctor, his arm resting on the bed railings. Lights shaped like candles glowed white beside the door so it must have been night. My sister wasn't allowed in being too young at 15. I could see the form of my mom and the larger shape of my father - he was over six feet tall. Smells of the outdoors still clung to him. But I could not see their faces. Where eyes with raised eyebrows and slender noses and mouths expressing concern should have been there was nothing. I could hear and understand them but couldn't speak, couldn't see their faces. I reached up for the blue-coated arm of the doctor, saw my parents shapes bend toward me, those ghosts masquerading as familiar beings. What's happening? I was scared and in my fear I sank back into coma.
I've been told that some of the experiences I noticed are like those of stroke patients, a kind of aphasia related to the head injury I'd suffered.
I have felt helpless on other occasions since then and yes before then, too. But it was the unseen-ness of those I loved that swallowed the confidence I'd felt earlier in that week, when I defended the horse, when I wondered why my parents were so dense as to not understand what I was saying.
To notice is critical to the craft of writing. Our writing instructor that day knew that, of course. We must be keen observers if we are to melt the frozen seas within ourselves and those around us.
But noticing is critical for living, too. My parents and sister have left this world many years ago now. And I notice it is harder to remember their faces. Without the gift of photographs, recalling them is not unlike the forms in that hospital room that night. So this season of Thanksgiving I will behold the faces of family and friends among the living and appreciate that I can see them. I'll remember when I couldn't make myself understood and be thankful that my language can be grasped by most of the people I interact with, even if sometimes the meaning of the words -like time- gets lost. I will notice the scent of juniper of the high desert, and drink in the color of the blue Deschutes River I live near now. And I will recall the brown rivers of my childhood with fondness and savor the truths that flowed with them carrying me into this world of gratitude and grace.
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