If I could see the world

Thru the eyes of a child,

What a wonderful world this would be.

There’d be no trouble and no strife.

Just a big happy life

With a bluebird in every tree

Patsy Cline (1957)

Last night I was one proud tawtaw. When my perfect granddaughter was given a sample of sushi in a restaurant, she made a deathly face, quickly deposited the nasty mess in her little hand and flung it past my left shoulder. It landed with a nice and deserving smack in the floor. I saw a family at the other table grinning and laughing. The first time I ate raw fish, I had the same reaction.

However if I had thrown my food on the floor in a public restaurant, I doubt the fellow diners would have been as impressed as they were with Emma’s childhood freedom to express her sincere reaction to raw fish in her mouth.

Imagine, for a moment, if we could see the world thru the eyes of a child. Recently we got out and there were some bright blue lights that I’ve seen a million times over a furniture store. As I was getting her out of the car seat, she saw them and said ‘loook tawtaw. Look at the pretty blue lights!’. I looked and said ‘you know what? They ARE pretty blue lights, now aren’t they Em?!’ ‘Yep’ she replied. 

I will be the first to say that I do not trust eternally happy people. Something is wrong with someone that never ever says or thought anything bad. They’re either medicated or simply lying to themselves and to me.  Why?

Because bad things happen in life. There are accidents, cancer and Covid. And then there are times when you’re talking to someone and you think in your head ‘how did you live this long and nobody took their shoe off and beat your hateful self to death?’

Bad things happen. Bad people happen. But it’s how we balance and wrap our heads around those bad people and things is what makes us who we are. Denying them doesn’t make them go away.

On the other hand, dwelling on them doesn’t make them go away. To the day she died my mom was upset with someone for breaking her camera 25 years ago. 

Sometimes you just gotta look at the good in things and people and step over the things that grate on your last nerve. Perhaps, I’ve gotten too good at that skill. I am horrible at a good verbal ousting a year later. I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast this morning, let alone why someone pissed me off 25 years ago. 

When my granddaughter, without prompting, says ‘tawtaw, I wuv you’. My heart just melts like a Hershey bar left alone in a car in the Tennessee August heat. It’s unsolicited and honest. And she has found valid reason, at 3 years old, to share that with me. 

At least for right now, she still see’s me through a perfect set pristine eyes that hasn’t seen the bad things in life yet. Everything is beautiful to her right now. And it’s beautiful to watch her see that beauty and remind me. 

The other night on a night ride down her street in her Jeep, I was jogging beside her. She stopped her pink Jeep with LED headlights and and bluetooth radio and pointed overhead to the street light illuminating the dark street. She said ‘tawtaw, say hi to that light!’.

Then the 59 year old white-beared man bowed and gave salutations to the beautiful street light and we proceeded our nightime sojourn down her quaint street. 

One of the gifts that children bring to us is the opportunity to slow down and to ‘SEE’ life again.  

To see the beauty of street lights.

To see and feel a sincere love. 

And to see that sushi is nasty.

And to act appropriatly with raw fish in your mouth while you still can get by with it. 

 

That’s the best that I can tell about it,

~Mark

 

I could see right, no wrong.

I could see good, no bad.

I could see all the good things

In life I’ve never had.

If I could see the world

Thru the eyes of a child

What a wonderful world this would be.

Patsy Cline (1957)

Last night I was one proud tawtaw. When my perfect granddaughter was given a sample of sushi in a restaurant, she made a deathly face, quickly deposited the nasty mess in her little hand and flung it past my left shoulder. It landed with a nice and deserving smack on the floor. I saw a family at the other table grinning and laughing. The first time I ate raw fish, I had the same reaction.

However, if I had thrown my food on the floor in a public restaurant, I doubt the fellow diners would have been as impressed as they were with Emma’s childhood freedom to express her sincere reaction to raw fish in her mouth.

That’s the best that I can tell about it,