He fumbled with the doorknob. Reaching over his head, I slid back the deadbolt and the door swung open. With inscrutable expression, he walked out and sat down on the bench swing, blankly surveying the air before him, legs swinging six inches over the floor of the deck. Six inches for his six years on earth.
I watched him a moment, then continued my journey to the pantry. My eyes flicked over shelves for the suitable food, resting ultimately on the Oreos. Shake out one – on an afterthought, I pocketed an extra and sauntered back to the glass door leading to the deck and backyard.
“Would you like one?” I asked Timothy, settling down next to him. I took care to enunciate since Timothy doesn’t speak much English. When his mother left Korea for a month, he forgot how to speak English because his grandma who looked after him spoke none.
“Yeah,” he answered.
I handed him one and proceeded to split mine in two, licking of the sugary cream of the center. People eat Oreos so many different ways. Some bite through all the layers at once, some eat one side with cream and one without. Timothy nudged my arm and I glanced down to see two sparkling black eyes and two Oreo halves licked clean. I was touched at his imitating me, and I ruffled his black hair affectionately.
“You’re silly,” I murmured.
When our Oreo’s were gone, we sat staring up at the trees and the sky. The sky was gray, the trees glowed, and our swing creaked. It was all in high definition, but the humidity made it a dismal rainforest. Why was it all so bright despite the clouds?
We sat. Patience. When I wanted to fidget. Patience. Patience. Calm down. Patience. Patience. Patience. Why was everything so beautiful. Patience. Patience.
As babies, we see the world as a confusion of unidentified, foreign objects. We cry because all we want is our mother’s milk. There is no security in the humongous world of wonder which lies just outside, but our mothers are safe, warm and familiar. They are our world.
Then we grow up a bit and graduate to curiosity. Everything that confused us as babies becomes something exciting and intriguing. Life is an adventure full of new sights and sounds. Our world is small but expanding constantly.
When we reach a certain age, nothing is quite so novel. Sobered, we wend our way in the world, discovering new things but never with that same wonder we felt in the curiosity stage. Familiar with so much, we walk in blindness to much of the world around us. We think we know our world fully.
Why this attitude? It is deeply ingrained, but surely the grownups have all noticed they aren’t noticing anymore. To take ten minutes and observe brings back a flash of childhood. And don’t we all wish we could be children again.
Then Timothy yelled and picked up the airplane he had obsessed over all day. We ran around in the yard with it, throwing it to each other and hollering all the way. Oh, to be a child once more.
Farewell, farewell, farewell.