High five!
The littles of this world can teach those of us bigs so much – if only we are willing to take the time to observe and listen.
Littles know so much more than we acknowledge. Their knowledge is innate and effortless. Because it is so simple those of us enlightened and mature folks often miss it because we are busy thinking about important things like laundry, clogged gutters or car payments.
All those things only muck up our brains and dilute the things that are really important. Things like picking dandelions, finding pretty rocks on the roadway and eating s’mores.
I am blessed to have a life filled with littles. I call them grandchildren and they are busy, messy and silly. They are loud when the grown ups want it to be quiet. They are often wide awake when it is time to sleep. They are anything besides hungry when it is mealtime.
But they are magical and they know things we have forgotten – if only we take the time to notice.
They see life through a clear lens that hasn’t been obscured by life, death, mortgage payments and a laptop that refuses to connect with the printer.
They know nothing about the realities of life that come about with adulthood.
Thank goodness.
My littles like crafting and creating. I have cupboard set aside for this purpose so they can find and take their supplies without my having to supervise.
Often when I’m busy with super important adult tasks, they cut and paste and color with markers. During this process – over the years – they have desecrated the top of my kitchen table with permanent markers, glue and paint.
And to be honest? I couldn’t be more proud. These littles in my life are so much more important than a kitchen table. The value of their creativity is infinite. I feel grateful for the opportunity to witness a small part of their growth process.
Still, I am part of this very serious adult world in which I live. My grands create masterpieces on my kitchen table all while I am doing something as mundane and inconsequential as cooking dinner.
During their last visit, my granddaughter worked on something for most of the afternoon. She cut construction paper and folded in accordion style. She traced her hand and cut that out from another piece of colorful paper and glued it to the accordion piece. Everything was decorated with above-mentioned markers. Rainbow doesn’t even begin to describe the variations. She affixed all of the above to another piece of construction paper and taped it to the wall in the bedroom.
And then she explained her process.
The traced hand, glued to the accordion paper, was high-five. She made it so anyone who felt they needed a high-five could give themselves one, because sometimes when you need a high-five there isn’t another person there the high-five you.
It was pure genius.
Don’t we all need a high-five from time to time? Facetious question. A high five equates to support and agreement. Those are things we need not only during the good times, but especially during the trying times.
We all have those.
And when we do, wouldn’t it be great to have a means to make ourselves feel better – sort of like giving ourselves our own high five?
Out of the mouths of babes.
I’ll high five to that.
