Warning: Children at Play

This morning I sat out on the back porch of my mother’s house and watched my three year old niece and two and a half year old nephew hurl their bodies against the side of an inflatable pool. The pool is maybe three feet tall, and the water was probably around 18 inches deep. Thrown against the inflated plastic, their small bodies became projectiles launched back into the water, causing explosions of water and laughter. The children had been left in my care, and I was content to sit back and watch this chaos unfold, as long as they didn’t bounce too hard and fling themselves out of the pool. If they were going to fling themselves out, however, which seemed like just a matter of time, I hoped it would be to the right and onto the grass, as opposed to the left and onto the concrete. But, of course, they tended to launch to the left.

Amanda and Timothy look exactly like their respective fathers -- my youngest brother, Joey, and my middle brother, Justin -- did when they were younger. And as I sat out there watching them play, and watching the dog, Blaze, eat charcoal, I had a sudden flashback of when I was kid playing in the same backyard. My mother’s house used to be my grandmother’s house, which my grandparents bought the year I was born, and which remained the only constant dwelling place in my childhood. My mom inherited it a couple years ago when my grandmother died, and moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma to live there. I think she did this, instead of selling the house, because she knew how important the home had been to the family. In any case, sitting out there this morning I recalled all the hot summers we spent there, and how my brothers and I would play in the backyard just as Amanda and Timothy were doing now.

We never had a three foot inflatable pool -- nothing ever as cool as that -- but we did have a pretty sweet sprinkler, which would launch streams of water into the air, forming an oscillating wall of water. My guess is that we spent half our summer lives running and jumping over that sprinkler and through the water. I remember how hot it would get during the summer here, just like it does now, but somehow with a different flavor to it, and how cool the water would be. We would line up, us three boys, and take turns -- one would run through, then go to the end of the line, then repeat. Eventually, however, my lack of sharing as a virtue would show itself, along with the realization that I was the oldest and therefore entitled to more fun than my brothers, and so I would cut in line. Cutting into a two person line is a blatantly obvious offense that my mother or grandmother would never fail to notice -- and even if they had missed it, Justin’s painful shrieks would have got me busted anyway, which of course were not limited to my water playing injustices. I hated that.

But for the most part, watching Amanda and Timothy playing and splashing around brought back good memories from summers past and provided a brief moment of reflection -- a moment which ended abruptly when the children discovered that they could ride the sides of the pool like a horse on springs, and I had to attend to them. I am grateful for the time I spent with them today, as is almost always case with these two kids.

I spend the majority of my time here, however, with my little seven year old cousin, Ethan, since I am staying with his father, and my good friend, Larry. Ethan is a little lovable punk, who most assuredly reminds me of myself when I was his age. On my end, most of my time with him is spent correcting bad theology, which of course does no good (though you can imagine my excitement when I asked him,“Who is Jesus?” and he responded, “We are Jesus!” I swear, I didn’t teach him that). But for his part, the time is spent in asking me what my name is. Five hundred times a day: “What’s your name?” “What’s your name?” “What’s your name?” It’s the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night -- interrupted only briefly by the discovery of armpit noises sometime last week. He is like a little person, however, now more than he has ever been -- he can even carry a conversation, which still blows my mind. And he provides plenty of entertainment as well -- like yesterday when he informed me, and the rest of those eating at the China King Chinese Buffet, that he was gay. “I’m GAY!” he shouted laughing, and I replied, “Oh Ethan, we won’t even know that for sure until you hit puberty.” He is annoying, gets on my nerves, and is a little punk of a kid -- but I love him to death, I love spending time with him, and I’m sure I will miss him terribly when I leave. All that said, however, I am not designed to live with a seven year old.

And all this to say that my vision has been renewed and reshaped since I've been here at home. I don’t usually spend a lot of time with children -- in fact, none at all since I moved to Atlanta. But here it seems like every minute has been dominated by people less than half my size. It’s annoyed me, challenged me, and ruffled me up a bit. My ordered universe stands no chance against the chaos of a child. But more than anything it has forced me to look at things from another perspective and allowed me to see the world through eyes in my kneecaps -- eyes I had forgotten I ever had.

Children are haptic and happy, chaotic and crying, wrapped in a blanket of vision that sees another kind of order, and to be honest I am not completely sure what to think of them. But I am as certain as I’ve ever been that the Kingdom belongs to such as these.