By Sasha Howell

Abbey Ryan, detail of *295*, Ink and Sumi ink on paper mounted on maple panel, 42 x 35 inches, 2009. Courtesy of the artist.

11 Facts

About Narwhals

Sasha Howell | MAR 2024 | Issue 31

A group of narwhals is called a blessing. I learned this in the dark hours of the morning when I should have been sleeping but wasn’t. My eyes and mind poked open by a question asked of me earlier in the day.

Do you have other kids?

I stop my slumbersome scroll at a picture: three silvery white creatures each with a seemingly magical horn rise up out of the water between chunks of ice to form what looks like a group high five.

You know this, I want to say to her but don’t. Just like I know the horn on the narwhal isn’t a horn at all. It’s a tooth. It spirals out from the skull, splitting through the lip on the left side of the head.

What I didn’t know until this nighttime dive is that narwhals have a second tooth, too. This one stays beneath the surface of the skin, rarely growing beyond a nub.

She asks again, thinking I can’t hear her over the noise around us.

Narwhals’ biological sensitivity comes from 10 million nerve endings that run along the outside of their tusks. They can sense the most subtle change in the water around them.

Salinity, temperature, pressure. I wonder if she can feel the shift too, our small talk becoming less small.

Is she your only daughter?

Made of ivory, the spiral tooth is both strong and flexible. It can grow as long as ten feet, and the tip can bend too, up to a foot in any direction. But if the tusk is ever broken, it never grows back.

Narwhals are warm-blooded, air-breathing mammals with compressible rib cages that can be squeezed without harming them. This is an evolutionary necessity for a species who dives at least 800 meters straight down from the surface of the water at maximum speed at least ten, sometimes thirty, times a day.

Just the one?

Asked and answered, I want to say because this particular woman has asked me before and I have answered, many times in many ways.

Unlike other whale species, narwhals never leave the Arctic waters. They live most of the year in the cracks of dense pack ice far from the shores of Greenland and Canada. In late spring, their predictable migration pattern takes them to shallower, coastal bays. If they fail to leave those summering grounds come autumn or in the face of a sudden dip in water temperatures, narwhals can become trapped by fast ice. Their breathing holes shrink or freeze over, and the animals drown.

I too am a creature of habit. There are at least five other nail salons my daughter and I could go to near our home. but I keep coming back to this one and to this woman and to her questions.

Maybe I want to be asked. Maybe I want to talk about the failed pregnancies that bookend my daughter’s existence. Or maybe I’m waiting for the day this woman will look at my daughter and see that even an only child can be known as a blessing.

Sasha Howell is a writer, mother, marketer, goof, and more. But of all the titles Sasha holds, her favorite is eternal optimist. Her work has appeared in Motherwell and in the books Bar Flies: True Stories From the Early Years, and Gems: Selections from Twenty Years of Mothers Who Write.

Abbey Ryan is a painter interested in the poetics of painting and classical painting as a meditative practice. Balancing traditional artistic expression with innovation is at the heart of her creative research and practice. With the accelerated pace of life today, Abbey's classical painting practice is an act of cultural preservation and revival. Abbey studied painting with David Leffel at The Art Students League of NY and completed graduate work at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She earned her M.F.A. in Painting from Hunter College, CUNY in 2007. In 2007, Abbey began making small daily paintings for her blog, Ryan Studio. Abbey's work is in over 1,800 private and museum collections on six continents. She has exhibited at venues such as Rockwell Museum, NY (awarded Distinguished Achievement in Still Life); Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, CA; Tucson Art Museum; John F. Peto Museum, NJ; Pratt MWP Institute, NY; Georgetown Art Center, TX; Boston Center for the Arts, and others. Her work has been in O, The Oprah Magazine, Seth Godin’s Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, FOX's Good Day Philadelphia, BoingBoing, Artists & Illustrators, Making It In the Art World, New Markets For Artists, Fine Art Connoisseur, American Art Collector, and many others. She teaches private painting mentoring online, as well as painting workshops nationally. Her work is represented by Gleason Fine Art in Portland, Maine, and Mason Fine Art in Atlanta, Georgia. Abbey lives and works in Philadelphia, PA, USA.