 Remember that thrill you
used to get when things were fresh and new? That tingle from your first dip in the
ocean, the joy of your first two-wheeled bicycle ride, the absolute rapture at catching a
butterfly (until your Grandpa told you they have little feathers on their wings and if you
touch them they are surely going to die)?
Perhaps it's time to look at the fresh, new year with exactly that same new perspective. I
am not talking about through rosy-tinted glasses that merely serve to mask problems and
get fogged over in the heat, but the unblemished, clear eyes of a child.
This concept came about quite naturally because of my dad's injury. No, not because
children seem to get injured all too often (although some kids even fall down on purpose
because they want to wear Flintstone Band-Aids) but because my dad's house is filled with
ramps. To a grown man (i.e. my father) or anyone else recuperating from a massive
surgery that leaves you landed in a wheelchair for six weeks, the ramps are necessary
objects, put in place to help wheel you to the important corners of the house -- like the
family room with the big screen TV blasting Monday night football. But to my
cousin's kid, Preston, who is the glorious age of about two, the ramps were a heavenly
playground. The kid spent countless hours (or at least the length of his visit)
rambling up and down and across and around and left and right although he has yet to know
his left from his right.
This concept also arose last summer, as I watched a little boy frolic on the beach,
prompting me to pen the following lament: "I too, desire to play in Coney sand --
without a hurry or a worry I'll get dirty."
O, to be so amused...not only by the simple things in life but by contraptions that annoy
us jaded adults. O, to not care if we get filth underneath our nails or rocks in our
sneakers. What's a little beach dirt, anyhow?
So what happens to us, anyway? According to the Romantic poets back in the 1700s,
children came streaming down from heaven, leaving in their peachy-pink wake a trail of
magical stardust directly from the divine. Worsdworth writes in his "Intimations of
Immortality": "Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might / Of heaven-born
freedom on they being's height, / Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke / The
years to bring the inevitable yoke....?"
It's a shame then that supposedly the first experience many babies had with life on earth
is getting bashed in the butt by the doctor the minute they exit the womb. Think
about the womb for a second, where the child is safe and warm and warm with every need
fulfilled. They don't even have to eat. All they do is float around, cozy with
comfort, in a soft cocoon -- not unlike the life of a cat. They are then blasted
into reality and man, it must hurt.
But the real pain does not come until later in life, after the child starts observing the
behavior of others around him, namely the adults. All too soon he too becomes jaded,
wan and pale with the mundane. We just can't help but imitate what we see.
I say recapture the child. Nurse your child inner desires. Mine likes to
create -- to write, to draw -- and it would probably like to play with Jacks if I really
knew how. But I deprive that child all too often with a focus too harsh, only
engaging in activities that may be deemed "profitable" or categorized as
"productive." Quite frankly, there is nothing more productive than feeding
that child -- not endless pretzels and Sweet Tarts that will surely make it nauseous and
green -- but with playful activities, adventure, and, above all, love.
Take heed, however, there is a caution in the billowing breeze here. There is a
MAJOR difference between being child-like and child-ISH. The former is what we are
shooting for -- to look at life as an awesome, powerful and wondrous experience -- every
aspect of it, from the crunchy grains of breakfast to the evening rush after work. Train
rides are much more enjoyable when, childlike, we wonder at the power of the train, the
rumors of the "mole people" living in the tunnels, the stories of dead bodies on
the tracks. Let our minds wander off into imaginative and fanciful lands -- not
remain bent on the person next to us who happens to be digging their umbrella into our
thigh. The latter -- the child-ISH -- is simply someone perhaps acting bratty and
immature. Think of a screaming five-year-old throwing a tantrum in the candy aisle
of Pathmark.
Sure, give in to that occasional Sweet Tart, since life is way too short to live deprived
on any level. And surely don't deprive your child of all the sweet things in life --
rapture, joy, the thrill of a game of Jacks...of all things fresh and new, even when they
seem ordinary and even a tad mundane.
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