A Child’s World

The kids created a pulley system that reaches from the upstairs landing to the downstairs hall.  They worked so hard on it.  My little girl contributed the rope and tried to find different pulley devices.  My son had ideas about length and maneuverability.  They looked at it admiringly.  Then they cocked their heads and wondered what to do with it.

I’m not sure who came up with the bright notion of dinner in a basket but that is what happened.  “Mom, do you think you could make us dinner and send it up in a basket?”  “Can we eat dinner in our room tonight?”  I looked at the two of them staring at me and wondered how I had created such clever little things and also how I get played so easily.  “Mom, do you have a basket big enough for our dinner?”

I like how their main concern is the size of the basket, not what will go in it or that I actually have to make the dinner or that they will be allowed to eat dinner upstairs.  These things are assumed.  After all, they have confidence in their world, a world that includes building pulleys to bring dinner upstairs.

I am in the kitchen chopping veggies, building sandwiches, cutting apples, all to go into small storage containers with lids that will be packed into a zippered bag.  I hope these travel well when they are drawn up twelve feet by anxious little hands.  I call the kids to the banister and show them my handiwork.  They yelp with glee.  “Tie it on tight, mom.”  The kids pull up their dinner.  It makes it up safely and they run off to their room to eat.

We think the world is this huge place full of marvels and wonders to be explored but really it is a child’s mind, a piece of rope, a limitless imagination, a mother that doesn’t say no too often.  The world is a child that hasn’t found the boundaries yet, that doesn’t know the laws of physics or humanities vagaries.  That is the real world, the world I would like to know again but have left it behind and it may be too late for me but it is not too late for them and if I play it right I may be able to stretch it out a little longer for them, let them live in it for a few more years, enjoy it for as long as possible.  It is a beautiful place their world.