Under an Ash tree

Kids always make for the finest stories. Kids are straight-forward and unencumbered by the complexities of their parent world.

Since November I ride with my wife to pick up our great-grandson after school. We park near the entrance to our Church across from the school. I roll my window down. There we talk and watch and listen. I enjoy our observational conversations about our studied examination of the parent-child interactions as they walk by.

As if marking our spot, there in the church lawn is a large bed of dazzling yellow day lilies in full bloom. You look at this bed and you think Southern Living.

A mother and her perhaps pre-k daughter came walking away from the school. The mother paused at the lily bed and admired the yellow blooms. She asked, “What do you suppose they are?”

Her daughter looked at her, amazed at her mother’s naivete, and answered, “Flowers.”

When the great-grandson, D, was 3 or so, his grandmother and grandfather had him out for a stroll along the River Park trails. As they walked along the railroad bridge with spans the Arkansas River, they came upon a fisherman carrying a stringer with a couple of nice fish on it. The grandmother said, “Oh, look at the fish.”

The excited D sprinted ahead a few feet, squatted down in a fashion that brought him eyeball to eyeball with the fish. After a careful visual examination, he said, “Hi fish.”

I would like to be privy to a child’s logic. At one time we all had it, we grew up with it. My imagination grew in the sandpile my grandfather had dumped under the large ash tree that once stood on “A” Street in Stigler. Sand piles encouraged creativity. Too bad about that cat poop thing.

I feel about my hometown much the way Garrison Keeler felt about Lake Woebegone. “Welcome to Lake Woebegone, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average.”

Pablo Picasso once observed, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

It is almost as if we believe that after our children reach a given age we must mute their play. You may only play with something “productive”. I cringe every time I hear an educator correlate play with academic performance. “You may not run for Student Council without a certain grade point average.” Well, boo-hiss. I intensely dislike hearing a child can’t participate this week because of academic performance. “He isn’t learning in the classroom, so let’s not allow him to play, to learn, in the activity God has chosen to gift him.” We never hear, “Poor English grade so you can’t participate in Algebra.”

Not all classrooms have walls and windows. If I have learned nothing else on my back porch, watching the squirrels and rabbits, listening to the birds call each other, I have learned to value play.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. – Frederick Douglas Hal McBride writes a column, Just Thinkin’, published each week.