A Child’s Gift
It was a bright fall afternoon, and we had just dropped off his mother at a bus stop on Woodward Avenue, Detroit’s main drag, a brief pause on her way to a grad school class and later, the “world of work.” Our son, something less than two at the time, was a creature of considerable fascination. As I negotiated this attractive residential street in suburban Pleasant Ridge, with its tall lush elms then gorgeous with autumn reds and golds, his small delighted voice from the car seat behind me said, “Papa! The trees are flowers!”
Stunned by this tiny kid’s perfect little metaphor, I thereafter told everybody we were raising a poet.
His mother, her degree achieved, began teaching full-time. I was working at home on a book, so a lot of our budding poet’s rearing fell to me. What we had in those days was a kind of “flex time’ arrangement where each of us could both work and care for our son. It turned out quite well, but when he became a more mobile and vociferous four, just as my book needed more quiet time, he spent a good part of each weekday in a nursery center nearby. That too seemed fine, and I’ve never had any regrets.
I was reminded of all this by several recent news stories about the controversy over day care. The stories invariably say that the first three years are absolutely crucial to a child’s development. They tell us more than half of all American mothers with pre-school-aged children now work outside the home, and most employ some form of day care. Usually a widely respected scholar is quoted as saying all the research shows children “do just fine” in a quality day care environment. But from another equally respected intellectual, we learn that most day care programs fail to provide the young child with the necessary stability and continuity. Finally, the alternative of “flex time” is proposed, tailoring employer’s demands to suit the needs of young families so both Mom and Dad can work part-time and care for the children themselves.
The emphasis is on what parents should be giving to their children. That’s fine. But I also like flex time for what it lets children give to their parents, especially fathers. It provides them with readier access to the gifts of children, the things they give so naturally to any adult who happens to be close by and in tune. Things like a brand new set of eyes and ears, a new sense of touch, of wonderment and awe. Things like these, not easily come by.
When my son was four I’d often take him with me to the local library when I needed to use a copy machine. He would press himself against the copier and, fascinated, watch as I placed page after page of my manuscript on the window, lowered the cover and plunked in my dime.
One day I decided I also wanted a copy of a magazine article for further research. When I placed the magazine on the glass and covered it, he suddenly tugged at my pant leg. Looking puzzled, he said, “But, Papa, what…?”
In a hurry, I said, “Hush, I’ll talk to you about it later.”
Once back in the car, I asked what he had wanted.
What would happen, he asked, if you didn’t put anything on the glass under the machine’s cover and then put in your dime?
Well, I said, the machine would give you just a plain, unmarked, white sheet of paper.
After a minute he asked, “Well, what would happen if you put a crayon on the glass and covered it up?”
Puzzled by his puzzlement, I answered, “I guess the machine would give you a piece of paper with a little blotch on it the size and shape of the crayon.”
He said nothing, and after a bit I figured out what was baffling his brain.
“You thought that the copying machine was really a copying machine, didn’t you? I asked. “You thought if you put in a magazine or a crayon, the machine would make you another magazine or a crayon.”
“Yes,” he said sheepishly.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if the machine really did that?” I asked.
“Yes!” he exclaimed brightly.
Of course, I went on to explain how the machine really worked, simply “taking a picture” of whatever you put on the glass. But, since then, I’ve never been able to use one of those amazing machines in the same blasé manner. A child’s gift.