Play-Doh and Crayons and Childlike Things

So last week and the week before I spent a few days babysitting some incredibly adorable children. They were really good, and I had a lot of fun playing make-believe games, reading Barbie Rapunzel five times in a row, coloring pictures, making crafts, and cutting out and decorating gingerbread cookies. Most of these activities were done with Disa, the four-year old girl. Cora, who's six, was at school most of the day, and the nineteen-month-old, Will, was either cheerfully occupying himself with small toys in his high-chair, or napping.

I won't forget the first day I babysat them. I spent about four hours playing in the basement with Disa. I don't even know how she came up with some of the games we played! Her imagination jumped so quickly and fully into her stories that it almost seemed like she was working from a pre-determined script.

We picked up Cora from the bus stop at four and went back to the house for an afternoon snack. We all sat around the kitchen table as the kids nibbled on white chocolate-covered pretzels and colored with markers. The kids also found a great fascination with my phone. Since it was an old, barely functional phone, I let them play on it, typing letters and words into blank text messages to no one in particular (though they did send a few to my dad, Megan, and accidentally call Andy). Only four, Disa didn't really know how to spell anything but her own first name, so she simply pressed all the letter keys until she had a long string of jumbled letters that she then made me “read” and try to make some sense of. Cora, on the other hand, could write out a few more full words.

When her turn came, she spent the time laboriously typing out “I love you, _____” and filling in Disa's name, and then Will's. Then she erased the name and filled it in for the third time, with my name. I was a little taken aback. This little girl, who I had now known for barely an hour, was already telling me she loved me.

Now of course, she couldn't really truly love me. I mean she didn't know me at all. I would guess for a little girl, she more meant “I like you, you're a nice person who I currently enjoy spending time with.” But that's too complicated a thought for a little kid. So the simplest way to express those positive feelings toward a person is with one simple word, love.

I would never tell someone I had known for barely an hour I loved them. Not someone I had known for a week, or even a month. Love is something that takes time, a process of getting to know someone and trust them, care about them, and eventually love them.

But maybe that's too difficult, too complicated. There are too many steps and possibilities for love to never occur. Maybe as we mature to adults we lose too much of the simplicity of being a child.

Kids love easily, forgive easily. They laugh and smile when they are happy, they cry and frown when they are sad. Their feelings are not hidden, their wants and needs are made known. When they have a question, they ask it. They don't worry about what others think of them. They don't care if they are liked or disliked. If someone doesn't want to be with them, they move on and find someone who does. Worries are simple, troubles easily solved.

Of course, as we grow up, things do get more complicated. It is no longer possible to live such a simple life. Jobs, school, money, deeper relationships, cars, houses, bills, these things fill our lives, but maybe we can still learn from the kids. Let the things that truly do not matter, simply slide. Roll with the punches and stop punching back. Live, love, and laugh easily and often.