It sounds like it’s 5 in the afternoon and all the neighborhood kids are over for a party, but it’s actually just my own kids catching up on each other’s dreams and happenings of the night that passed and its 7:01 AM.
Bleary eyed and yawning, I quickly get dressed and hear tapping on my bedroom door. It’s my 4 yr old and it sounds urgent. “Mommy, do you know what racecar spelled backwards is?!??”
This truly is urgent, at 7:03 AM no less.
“No, what is it?” I ask him, trying to sounds as enthusiastic as he sounds.
“It’s racecar!!” He squeals. Right, of course. No, I didn’t know that. And that really IS urgent for 7:03 AM. For a 4 year old, that is!
As I finished up and headed downstairs to start the breakfast-get dressed-shoes-socks marathon, all I could think of was hmm, I never did realize that racecar spelled backwards is racecar. That really IS pretty neat. Maybe I knew it when I was 4, but it’s been long forgotten. And I thought of how excited my four year old was to share it with me.
Such an exciting discovery.
Life is so exciting and intriguing at that age; life is just fascinating. So much to see, so much to learn, so much to discover. And the truth is, it doesn’t matter how old you are; life is STILL fascinating and there is so much to learn and discover; only our minds are more muddled with other things and we don’t see it all as clearly.
In reality, we have a choice. We can choose to see life from the battered and worn place we are in or we can choose-with a bit of effort-to see it as a 4 yr old; full of opportunities of learning and growth. It’s not life that changes, it’s us as people that change.
So as I served and cleaned and wiped spills and picked up fallen spoons and answered multiple questions at the same time, while stepping over the crawling 11 month old, I turned to my four year old and with as much enthusiasm as I can find in me before my morning coffee, I told him, “Wow, I never realized racecar backwards is also racecar!!” And silently I added, “and I hope you always have the same enthusiasm for all of life’s lessons and discoveries. And I hope today I can experience that too.”
He beamed.
Little Yellow Notepad 