They need bigger beds. Oliver has a big boy bed now. If you know his parents as well as I do, you would realize that he is their quintessential combination. He is smart, outgoing, smart, good looking, smart, good natured, smart. (Smart runs in both parents; They can fight about all the rest.) Oliver loves to read. His big thing now is to find the word car in this book that he likes and when you ask him things about the book he knows what's going on, remembers words even difficult ones like pedestrian and carefully. He uses the preposition to for everything. He hands you a candy bar and says with a cuteness that ought to be included in a penicillin capsule: Open to me please. I love it when you see a child grow up right before your eyes, the way they start putting things together in their heads, how they get excited about a word the way they do with new toys. I envy parents for this very novel view of the world.
Once I was in a New York subway train and I happen to observe a young new reader as she mouth the word exit silently. She tried a good many times before giving up and after her Mom finally helped her sound out the words, I saw her close her eyes, briefly and almost solemnly, as she entered that word in the brand new and enormously spacious database in her head.
In life, there is a place for critical thinking and questioning and doubt---even cynicism---but I would rather see the world the way these kids do. Presented with a candy bar of strawberry goodness, I want to approach the world the way Oliver does. With open arms and curious eyes I want to say:
Open to me, please. Open to me!
No comments:
Post a Comment