This week we are with our four youngest grandchildren, ages 7 (twins), 9, and 10, for seven days before they start back to school.
Needless to say, there hasn’t been a dull moment thus far because that is the way children are, always jumping, running, laughing, playing games, and, of course, tattling on each other in hopes of getting somebody in trouble.
But what stands out as it always does whenever people my age are with children their age is just how totally innocent they really are.
Yes, they can be unkind, even mean to one another, but at the end of the day they are still children, children who trust the adults around them to love them, take care of them, keep them safe, and tuck them in bed with a good night kiss.
They are innocent because abstractions have not yet entered into their thinking. Literal pretty much describes the world they live in. Existence is for a moment. Even when they are excited about going to the park tomorrow, today is the only thing on their radar screen.
They play a game and then move on to the next one or the next set of rules one of them comes up with. They make up stuff as they go along. Nothing is complicated. The sillier the activity the more fun it is.
As I sit and watch them thinking about their world and mine my mind wonders, and I begin to wish things for them, and for all children.
I wish they never had to worry about the kind of economic inequity our nation now has.
I wish they would never have to know that not all children get to go to a doctor like one of them did this week whenever they need to.
I wish when they get older they would never have political leaders who were ready at the drop of a hat to send them to war.
I wish when they become adults they would live in an America that really did judge people by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin.
I look at my grandchildren, innocent as they are, and wish I didn’t have to worry about the damage my generation is doing to the planet they will inherit because of our selfishness.
I especially wish for them that we had never become a nation that foolishly tolerates frustrated cowboys who want to go to their child’s elementary school wearing a gun.
This week I have thought a lot about how wonderful all children are, not because they are always good, but because they are so innocent and fragile, and wished so much that we really were the kind of country we could be.
But, alas, we are not, and maybe never will be, for many reasons, I suppose, but one of the main ones being that too many of us think we already are.
And yet, I cannot give up trying to do my small part in making our nation better, for the sake of my grandchildren, and everyone’s grandchildren, here and even around the world.
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