Driving back to work from lunch I saw two little girls waiting to cross the street. I stopped my car and waved them across. The weather was brutal- cold thick sleet- and it seemed unkind to make them wait for me. The smaller one was holding a plastic shopping bag that hung heavily but occasionally caught the breeze like a most inconvenient windsock and her small gloved hands fought to keep hold of it. The taller girl was clutching a dollhouse to her chest; hugging it tightly as if it were her most precious possession. They were out braving this nasty winter weather for the chance to create their own small world this afternoon. To me, these two little girls looked like the last refugees of childhood– a childhood where kids actually played with toys and used their imaginations.
Those of us who grew up before video games and cable TV replaced actual playing (or, in my case, too poor to afford such things) have a different sort of nostalgia about children who play. There is something sweet and theatrical and innocent about it. It reminds us that the imagination really is unlimited- a fact we often forget when we’re older. We see kids frolicking in a seemingly unending fountain of energy and we wonder where they found it because we get worn out just going to work and coming home every day.
I was never very good at playing. In my family, there is a rather infamous story of me playing dolls with my sister and telling her, “No! She doesn’t say that! She says THIS!”. I was probably 4 or 5 and I was already imposing limits on my sister’s imagination. I liked to color inside the lines in the coloring books and I always tried to make sure my letters faced the right way when I wrote things. I never knew how to be a kid very well when I was one and now I feel like I missed out.
This is just my reminder, a plea really, to all of you who are parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Always encourage children to play. If they want to sit at dinner and carry on a conversation between their fork and their slice of bread, listen. If they want you to be the evil Hawk Man so they can be the hero and attack you, be Hawk Man. The laundry and the dishes and those papers and that expense report can all wait; kids can’t.
You’ll blink and they’ll be thirty.
After all, isn’t that what happened to us?
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