Childhood Revisited

One of the joys of being a parent is seeing your children discover the world. When they are first born, a child’s world is mostly a blurry vision of moving blobs in space. Soon, they discover that they have wondrous sucking things that parents refer to as hands and feet. As things come into focus and baby can sit up, they are introduced to the expanse of their crib and finally learn that they have parents. This goes on and on. The world they know gets bigger and bigger every day.

Kassie is coming up on the big oh-two. I found a stack of pictures the other day taken in the hospital when she was born. I can tell by looking at her that she was not happy that her world had gone from this warm, cozy, wet place where her activities consisted of floating and punching through my belly wall at the wand used to monitor her in stress tests. Back then, her universe was encapsulated inside my belly. Nowadays, she loves to run across open fields or point to objects and shout out their names just to show everyone how smart she is. How did I get from this teeny bundle to an extroverted toddler? I am not sure, but I know it has been an interesting journey.

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how little Kassie's sense of smell and taste seem similar to mine. I will often find her eating things out of a tube. Scented lotions I can somewhat understand, but hydrocortisone? I have tasted the stuff. It is nasty. Kassie has also fostered a reputation as an accomplished poo painter. If we are not quick enough, she will take off her diaper and use the contents to create a masterpiece on her crib or her wall or even herself. I can understand the appeal since poop is similar in texture to finger paints and, on some days, Play-doh. But the smell should be a deterrent. I get knocked over when I walk into the room. Kassie just laughs and jumps in her crib obviously thrilled with her latest work. This early talent will horrify her later in life when I am telling it to her prom date, but, for now, she is so proud.

All of this is just the norm of development. All kids observe their world as its boundaries expand. It is fun to watch the discovery of how a toy works or how the TV will turn on and off with a touch of a button. This backfires occasionally when she hits the power button on the stereo and Papa has been listening to his music at high volume and forgot to turn it back down. But, I digress.

While all this discovering and expanding is really cool, the joy I find in parenting presents itself when I am forced to slow way down and take a good, hard look at the world. How many times have I been in our backyard, yet never really looked at it? The other day we were pulling all the vegetation out of the garden and Kassie came over to help me. Together, we worked until we suddenly found ourselves in one corner of a bed hunched over a caterpillar making his way across a strawberry leaf. While the sun beat down on our backs, Kassie stared in wonder at this furry little creature moving along in a way she was unfamiliar with. As he moved along, she would do her sideways crab walk to get a better view. I waited for her to reach out and grab the poor creature, but she just sat there, staring at it, taking it all in. I don’t know what she thought of the caterpillar, but she would point to the caterpillar and let out an occasional “whoa” followed by a string of sounds that are words in her own special language and then she would go back to watching the progress in the strawberry bed. This little bug captivated her for at least 15 minutes.

I have been weeding all summer and have seen a lot of these caterpillars in the past few weeks. Normally I will just scoop them up and throw them into some part of the garden t6hat still has vegetation in it. I had never really stopped to watch one. However, on this day, I really stopped to wonder about the life of a caterpillar. I don’t know much about bugs or their life spans. I know that this little guy would soon go into a slumber and wake up transformed into a beautiful creature with wings. I did pause to reflect on the meaning of his little life. What is the point? Why was this little guy in my strawberry plant? Where was he going? Where had he come from? Days later, I am still puzzling over it and rambling on about it in my blog. All this because Kassie wanted to stop and watch a caterpillar make his way across a strawberry plant.
What is kind of astounding to me is that all of this took place in the space of about a square foot. How many other square feet like this had I walked past completely missing the wonder contained therein?