That Will Never Happen
It’s the power of a child to remind us of beliefs we’ve surrendered as an adult. No doubt it’s appropriate to discard assumptions that conflict with our experience, but still it’s easy to long for a world that wouldn’t argue when we assumed it would always be kind and merciful.
Yesterday I was walking with my four year old granddaughters to a neighborhood park. Alice, who walks either way ahead, or way behind, was on this occasion well ahead. As is her custom she suddenly became distracted and stopped in her tracks. This time she bent over and gazed at something on the sidewalk that, at my distance, was small enough to be invisible.
When I did catch up, and from my august height of five feet seven, the thing was still nearly invisible. It was a small brown object: perhaps a seed pod or maybe a small stick. From Alice’s more proximate viewpoint its identity was no mystery. “Look grandpa, a grasshopper. It’s not moving. Maybe it’s dead.”
I bent over, but even from a closer vantage point it wasn’t easy for me to see what it was. The previous day had brought with it a cold snap, and the tiny carcass laying on its side was brown, not green. The closer I looked the easier it was to agree with Alice. Indeed, it was a grasshopper and it had, most definitively, deceased.
She looked up at me as though she was expecting there was something we should do next, and I should know exactly what that thing was. Finally I said, “You’re right Alice, it is dead. Unfortunately, it didn’t survive the cold.”
“And that’s it?” She said, still expecting that there should be something more than that one, hard, cruel fact.
“Yes, I said. That’s it for Mr. Grasshopper. They don’t last longer than the warm part of just one year, but they leave eggs and next spring we’ll have grasshoppers again.”
My observation brought “The Lion King” to her mind. “Just like Mufasa and Simba,” she observed, “The circle of life.”
“Yes,” I replied, “just like that.”
Maybe I should have simply left it there, but her attention remained on that one dead grasshopper. She was transfixed, her head bowed in a way that resembled reverence.
Looking for a segue I continued my thought, “Someday, your grandpa will wind up in heaven and maybe you’ll get to be some little girl’s grandma.”
That ended Alice’s concentration. She looked up as if waking from a dream. “That… grandpa,” she stated in a level and emphatic tone, “that will never happen!”
I decided that her point of view deserved to be left in peace. I gave her hand a little squeeze and we continued on with our walk to the park.