If you’re interested in yesterday’s conversation, it’s still going strong.  I’ve gathered your best questions, and thrown them down, but I’ve no Idea if Benji’s bound to bounce them.

“Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows.”  

~John Betjeman, Summoned by Bells

I don’t think there’s a sum I wouldn’t part with for the chance to live inside my children’s heads, either one, and even if only for half an hour. 

I’m totally serious. 

I’d drive to the bank, stack my collateral, beg for a loan, then walk home and figure out the best way to take care of the interest before it buried me to bones. 

Whatever I saw from behind those eyes, I’m sure, would be exponentially worth it. 

I can only ponder how my children view a world unfolding three feet from the ground.  By the time they’re old enough to really break it down for me, they’ll no longer be focusing behind the same lens. 

I helped make them, I certainly know them, and I believe I’ve a pretty good idea about how they string their thoughts together.  But it’s been a long time since I was as little as they are now, and I’ve long since forgotten what it’s like to peer at the world in front of me, without so much as a single breath of cynicism. 

I cannot imagine feeling, at my age, anything so innocent. 

When they’re grown, I hope I haven’t lost the wonder of musing the machinations of their minds.  I hope, when my children are my age now, and Daisy and I are cradling our grandchildren between us for a long, anticipated weekend, that I’m still wondering.  

Of course, I won’t be able to see any more clearly into the mind’s of those still too small to speak, or too tiny to know the minutia of poverty, crime, and deceit. 

I will not be able to see through the eyes of my grandchildren, so I’ll turn my eyes to Mia and Max, and see the world as they do.  It will be easier by then.  Our long histories will have woven together with the unrelenting fabric of shared experience.  Their first world view, born beneath the shade of Daisy and myself. 

So when I’m wishing I could see the world as my grandchildren do, but peering from the perspective of my own brood, it will be the perfect time to ask myself…

Do I like what I see? 

Writer Dad

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