WINDOW-ON-THE-WORLD

Moving Van, Chicago, IL

While staying with my one-year old grandson during the day recently, I realized how out of touch I had become when it comes to having the curiosity and imagination of a child.  Jesus remarked in Matthew 18:3-4 “Truly I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”  We adults have lived long enough to have accumulated and be blinded by all the biases and lenses through which we filter the world around us.  It was a renewal of spirit to once again see the world through the lens of a little child.

We literally spent off and on hours with two cut-out books that had successively larger holes for truck wheels and fish.  The Zoom truck book has already received so much attention that the spine has separated from its moorings.  But that wasn’t a result of repeated readings.  No, this spineless book has been through an unlimited number of passing’s of small trucks through the one page where cutout wheels are big enough for the drill.  Of course, that’s not the book’s intended purpose, but one that has already claimed its destiny in this life.

And just when you think that the game is over, a screeching ambulance, a large white delivery truck, a noisy sports car, or a bright yellow school bus interrupts the silence of the third-floor unit in the Chicago Greystone and we rush to our window-on-the-world just in time to catch a glimpse of the passing vehicle below amid the wondrous verbalizing of the language of a young child’s “Oooooooo’s”.  That reality sparks renewed interest in once again passing the miniature trucks through the magical portals to a new dimension!  These traits will serve him well as his window-on-the-world begins to expand exponentially.

Soon a moving van realizes that it has just entered a one-way street going the wrong way.  So, it turns into the alley below and maneuvers around as electronic back up signals sound the alarm.  The urgent sound immediately brings us back to the window sill so that the entire episode can be absorbed.  And then just as the street traffic seems to settle down, a city trash truck can be heard digesting the cast-off waste of the big city dwellers before it continues on its never-ending mission to our eternal childlike delight.