Image: Jordan Whitt @ Unsplash.com
While I took a few days off, I was “piddlin’ around the house,” as Mama says, when I heard a distinctive and unusually loud, “Bye-bye!” It sounded close. Really close. I went outside to investigate.
Sure enough, my new next-door neighbor, Rory, was on my front steps, his grandfather standing nearby and trying to coax him back into his own yard. Rory is a blue-eyed, snowy blond little bundle of energy—I think about two—whose parents do their best to corral him into their back yard. But sometimes, Rory needs the wide open spaces of two yards. He has learned to say “bye-bye,” which he uses as both a greeting and a farewell (accompanied, if you’re lucky, by a blown kiss).
He grinned at me from my own front steps, then climbed onto the stoop, where he tossed a cat bed out of my brick planter and dug in the dirt for two seconds. Then it was down the steps and into the flower bed for a look around. Then up again. Then streaking across the front yard. Then into and out of the Story Shack, where he found my old Zumba dumbbells (they’re actually just lightweight yellow noise makers that look like dumbbells, so you can imagine how enticing they’d be to a toddler). Then he was ready to go back home, shaking the Zumba bells over his head.
Everything is interesting to Rory—for only a flash, but still. Everything is interesting and new and discoverable. A cat! (He calls Cheeto “meow-meow.”) Colored lights! (We have some on our deck, which Rory sometimes has to see up close and personal.) Dirt! (Could there be a more basic toy?)
My prayer for the New Year is that we adults can recapture some of the excitement of discovery. Every day is made new, but sometimes we forget that. I know I do.
Many blessings to you in 2019.
New Year Blessings to you! Thanks for All the Heartwarming Blogs!
Posted by: Sharla jackson | January 06, 2019 at 03:34 PM