I believe childhood innocence is a beautiful
and all-too-temporary glimpse of the divine.
Children have no guile, no ulterior motives, no
malice. That trust, that innocence, is sadly tarnished as they grow and
develop and interact with adults--who intend only to prepare them for reality,
for life. But before that innocence is tarnished, it is something to behold.
When Meg was four years old, I took her and her
weeks-old baby brother shopping. I had Seth in my arms, I was pushing a
stroller, and I was intent on finding a deal. Meg was born capable, and
so I found myself paying little attention to this curious child as I immersed
myself in my quest for a bargain. She obediently followed me through Kids
Gap, one hand attached either to the stroller or her brother's dangling leg.
However, at one point I looked down to find she was no longer attached. In fact, she was wandering off. I panicked, sternly called her
name, and was ready to scold when I realized she was very interested in
something, something she had not seen before. She was so interested that
she had violated my rules and had begun to follow this small woman around the store unabashedly wide-eyed and intrigued.
I was immediately embarrassed. My sweet
little child was staring at difference. My innocent girl was in the
process, I perceived, of making someone feel uncomfortable. I smiled at her
and quietly suggested that she say hello and move on. She couldn't.
She was mesmerized and speechless. This woman moved, so did Meg.
This woman sorted through a rounder, Meg watched. Her curiosity was unabashedly obvious. As I watched and tried to alleviate the situation without being noticed, I felt more and more uncomfortable--to the point that I used her brother as an excuse to leave and escorted Meg out of the
store. I was at that moment ashamed of my daughter and her lack of social
acuity.
I was ready to lecture; I was ready to teach. Fortunately, I held my tongue and allowed her to open the dialogue, to
invite my developing dissertation on manners, politeness, and difference.
And she did. She began, "mom, did you see that little
girl?" I nodded, waiting for her to implicate herself in judgment.
Instead, she finished with what was clearly a combination of admiration
and perhaps a twinge of jealously: "she had her own credit card."
I was speechless. I knew immediately that my
own perceptions were flawed, that my years of education and that my commitment
to celebrate and accept difference were forced in comparison to her genuine
acceptance. She hadn't noticed a small person, she hadn't registered fear or
discomfort; instead, she saw independence that she longed for--a child shopping
on her own, free from the restrictions of an intense, overbearing,
quick-to-judge mother.
All too often, we impose our own insecurities
and biases on others without even registering that those are our issues, not
theirs. As a literature professor, I regularly have students resist certain
texts. So often in fact that I have resorted to a
beginning-of-the-semester warning: you will read difficult subject matter
in this class and you should consider dropping if you don't possess the
maturity to handle it! Okay, in truth I say it much more professionally, unthreateningly, and pleasantly than that, but that is what I mean. That is the message I intend
to convey. When a student later comes to me and behind closed doors tells
me the text is too dark, or too ugly, or too violent to read, I resist the urge
to lecture, to declare that an inability to find beauty and truth in darkness
is a reflection of the reader's heart...not the text.
Written 26 April, 2016
Love.
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