Glimmers and Ducks
Photo via @amyjoyhumphries on Unsplash.
Looking for a little story magic?
Try spending time with your glimmers.
With increased access to cost-free guidance from mental health experts via the Internet, more and more folks have become aware of their triggers. Naming our triggers can help us begin to regulate our nervous systems in response to these pesky cues that send us full speed into F mode: fight, freeze, or flight. Another nervous system regulation technique that’s gaining traction is the practice of recognizing glimmers.
As defined by Deb Dana, the licensed clinical social worker who coined the term in 2018 as part of the development of her Polyvagal Theory of Therapy, glimmers are:
[S]mall moments when our biology is in a place of connection or regulation, which cues our nervous system to feel safe or calm.
Glimmers are moments of sensory stimulation, aroused by images, sounds, tastes, smells, or textures. Perhaps your glimmer is the feeling of the sun on your forearm as you drive with the windows down on the first warm day of spring or the smell of the hairspray you used when you were a teen.
Since learning about glimmers, I started mentally labeling when I experience one. Many times my glimmers are small, native creatures I see on a trail walk: bunnies, squirrels, turtles, and frogs. Woodpeckers are always glimmers. As are hummingbirds and salamanders. Particularly in early spring here in Pennsylvania, my glimmers also include the green shoots of crocuses peeking up from flower beds, the thwump of a flying V of Canada Geese returning from their winter migration, and the dink of a metal bat hitting a baseball.
This practice of noticing sensory experiences is something many writers do naturally as they move about the world, but, with practice (and the added bonus of soothing our nervous systems), incorporating glimmers can become a nourishing and intentional part of our writing practices.
During our busy, overstimulated days, it's challenging to simply notice.
For me, the difficult work, which is to say, ahem, the writing, often begins when I decide to double down on a glimmer. When something—an image, a juxtaposition, a way-of-being-in-the-world— snags my attention repeatedly, I’ll begin to examine it from many angles. Often this leads me to researching whatever it is I’m paying attention to, whether it’s a turtle basking on a rock or a certain feeling my kid has after losing a soccer game. The work I produce, through this noticing and appreciating, jotting and researching, followed by molding, shaping, and reshaping—what many label so clinically as process—might eventually result in something that creates a glimmer in another person. This is the wonder of art.
Which brings me to the ducks.
A recent NYT article covered a day when about 225 people attended a library event in a small coastal town in Maine. The patrons were there for story time with Sarah McCloskey, daughter of Robert McCloskey, author of the classic picture books Blueberries for Sal and Make Way for Ducklings. Writing for NYT, Elisabeth Egan describes this dreamy, glimmery scene at the library:
As “Sal” McCloskey, now 78, settled into an armchair at the front of Morrell Reading Room, a hush fell over the undulating sea of children at her feet. It was as if an adult version of Matilda, Pippi or Eloise had just strolled into the room in a yellow T-shirt and khakis. McCloskey’s hair is salt and pepper — gone is the tousled mop her father drew with India ink — but she still felt familiar, like an old friend you haven’t seen since preschool. This sense of abiding affection was a powerful reminder that certain characters imprint on our DNA — and that the writers and artists who conjure them have a bit of magic in their fingertips.
If it’s been a while since you’ve read Make Way for Ducklings, it’s worth reading alongside a recent picture book biography: Mr. McCloskey's Marvelous Mallards: The Making of Make Way for Ducklings, by Emma Bland Smith. To avoid spoilers, all I will say is that, when read together, these texts are a master class in how to double-down on a glimmer. In Mr. McCloskey’s case, ducklings.
But is it magic?
For most of my life, skepticism has been my natural state of being. This old conditioning does not allow me to automatically accept the notion that it is magic to notice and then write about ducklings.
Anyone can notice ducklings.
I do it all the time.
One time that was particularly memorable was at the New Jersey shore with my daughter last summer. We were at a bayside restaurant for a dinner past both of our bedtimes. Nearby, a family of ducks huddled up after sunset, just out of reach of the foamy edge of the tide. Two adult ducks, I assume the parents, continued to pull their beaks out from beneath the shelter of their wings to check on the babies each time the water approached.
My daughter was transfixed and agitated by how close the ducks were to the rising tide. I, on the other hand, did not feel agitated at all. I felt calm. I felt glimmery. I promised her the ducks wouldn't sleep there if they didn't feel safe. Ducks know. And now I know, because I noticed, that some ducks sleep huddled up on the sandy shores of the bay.
Reflecting on this experience, I'm challenging my cynical nature.
Perhaps it is some sort of magic to notice ducklings.
I watched plenty of people blow right by the ducklings on their way to the bathroom and back, without giving the ducklings even a first glance, let alone taking the time to notice them adjusting their sleeping bodies when the tide tickled their webbed feet.
I'm not sure I'll ever do enough of the hard work of appreciating this glimmer to turn shoreline ducklings into a picture book, but, in thinking about Robert McCloskey’s process, I can see that the opportunity is there. I can see that stories start with glimmers, develop with curiosity and hard work, and, in the most magical cases, end with a little magic—a glimmer—for the reader.