Through the eyes of a child

I’m always amazed at what my children can see. They can spend twenty minutes searching for a pair of “lost” shoes lying in plain sight at the bottom of the closet and still never find them, but can take one sweeping glance at the television set and tell whether the batter is a lefty (“like Coopa”) or a righty (“like me!”). So many new things to learn at such a rapid pace, and they are soaking it all up every minute of the day. Through the eyes of a child, the world is a beautiful, interesting, curious, comical and sometimes scary place.

It’s fun to watch them discover that they have learned something new. After mastering the alphabet and the spelling of their names, anything that was a circle looked like the letter “O”: cookies, wheels on the bus, and every knob on the cabinets in our kitchen. Three o’clock (on the clock) is always an “L”. A squiggle in the garden hose makes the perfect “S”, and the handle of a coffee cup, a capital “D”. All that, I’d say, is pretty simple. But when Brisco stood up from the potty in the restroom of the Lookeba-Sickles field house and said, “That looks like a six!”, in reference to the shape of the handle on the toilet, well, that’s when I knew this child was probably always going to think outside the box.

The smallest observation, I’ve learned first hand, can create connections in their minds and make all the difference in whether or not they comprehend the lesson we are trying to teach. Lately, we’ve been working on picking up after ourselves, a lesson no male in this house has yet to grasp. After a rather overdue deep cleaning of our kitchen recently, Cooper came in to see clear cabinets, freshly mopped floors, and the smell of lemon pine sol. He said, “Mom, I really like your house.” After which he immediately picked up his three pair of shoes, two hats and rather disgusting pile of damp, muddy clothes from the day and deposited them in their appropriate locations. Yes, it is amazing what kids can see.

Children can sometimes be so simple; however, the job of raising them is anything but. After being gone on vacation, Brisco decided he needed some serious “Momma Time”. One morning, he curled up in my lap and gave me one of his great big bear hugs, wrapping his arms and legs around me so tight I could hardly breathe--one of the best feelings in the world. Then he looked up at me and said, “Mom, did you know someday we’re all gonna die?” I took it as any well prepared, intellectual, mother of two would--like a rock to the side of the head.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, our youngest became somewhat preoccupied with death and dying. He was persistent in his questions and concerns about exactly how and when death would be coming. “When are we gonna die?” And “If I eat this, will I die?” And “If you hold something in your hands, will it still die?”

We did our best to give appropriate and adequate answers to this difficult and rather adult line of questioning, but he just kept coming back with more. It seemed he was having a hard time making this heaven place out to be a good thing. Evidently, he had just put it all together that in order to go there, one first had to die. And if dying was anything like a ten day vacation, he had decided he wanted no part of it.

“Do you wanna go to heaven?” he asked me one day with the look and tone of “Why would you wanna do something like that?” I answered, “Of course I do!” at which time he proceeded to inform me that I’d have to die first. I finally decided if I was going to help change his way of thinking, I’d have to bring out the big guns. And for Brisco, that always involves chocolate.

“You love chocolate, don’t you?” I asked him in a melt in your mouth not in your hands kind of way. His eyes got wide and he smiled really big. He made that “Yum” sound and hugged his tummy right on cue. “Well, think about heaven as a place where there’s lots of yummy chocolate, and you can have all you want.” His wheels were turning, but he’d not yet climbed on board. I put it in reverse.

“Brisco, it is ok to ask questions about dying and going to heaven, but you don’t need to worry about it all the time. Nobody knows when they are going to die, but for most people it is not until after they are grown and have played lots of ball and gotten married and had children and are the daddy and then the granddaddy. Most people live for a really long time until they are very old. We just have to read our Bible and do what God wants us to do in the meantime.”

There. That should do the trick.

He looked at me in a questioning way as if he were about to ask the most profound question of the decade, “But Mom, when I get to heaven…can I have ice cream with my chocolate?”
“You can have anything you want!” I said with a smile.

For the most part, that has put an end to his obsession with death. Not that I’m unhappy that my kid is thinking about heaven, but to be worried about dying at the age of three could really put a damper on the next 50 years. He still asks random questions, like one cloudy day last week he said, “Did the sun die?” Those kinds of curious, comical and sometimes heart wrenching questions come so easily from innocence of our children.

Lately, we’ve just been taking it easy, eating our way through a jumbo bag of pretzels, guessing the number or letter that is formed after each tasty bite. Watching squirrels climb trees and observing ants taking loads of bread crumbs back to their den. Being completely exhilarated by a bases loaded, two out, full-count A-bomb in the bottom of the ninth to give our men in pinstripes yet another amazing win. It’s the simple things in life that make our kids smile. And us, too, when we take the time to see this world through their eyes.

And that’s All in a day’s work!