Learning About Cows

Yesterday I went to class. I go to this class every Tuesday evening and for an hour and a half I babysit Eric- the chunkiest most adorable toddler this world has ever seen. On Tuesdays his mom drops him off in the classroom and we play. Now ‘playing’ can mean a lot of different things but this is how it looks for us:

Eric chooses a bin of toys which I pull out of the closet and open. Then he picks up each toy and hands it to me asking “Dada?” to which I reply the name of whatever toy he is curious about. We methodically make our way through the toy food and the farm animals, and sometimes even the building blocks, in this manner for the duration of our time together.

This may seem to rival counting toothpicks in terms of excitement but I am here to assure that the reality is quite the opposite. With each new name a flicker of emotion contorts Eric’s face into a full triple chinned smile of sheer joy, and it is this face that pushes me to continue with my lesson. The best part of the lesson is that I don’t have to teach it.  Although I do provide Eric with the names and functions of countless toys, he is very much the teacher. 

See, I am learning how to appreciate every bit of this life. A wonderful example of my most recent lesson- Cows.  When Eric first held up to me a little plastic cow and asked “Dada?” I explained that what he was holding is commonly referred to as a cow, and that is makes the sound “Moo”. Anyone over the age of five would agree that this is the truth but Eric was not so sure. He shot me an incredulous look and asked again, this time with the full authority of his 36 months of life “Dada?” Those two syllables seemed to demand a reason for the inexplicably mundane single syllable label which I was attempting to affix to this black and white splotched piece of plastic.

At that point I could not help but to look at the situation from Eric’s perspective. His thought process may or may not have sounded something like this: “What is this thing? Cow… is that supposed to be its identity or did you burp? Why are you looking at me like this is so important? It is just a piece of plastic…. What is Moo? Is this Moo you speak of another attempt to explain my black and white plastic or are you yawning now?”

Watching his face I felt obliged to explain to Eric why cows are important, how they contribute to our society, what they look like in real life, and he found this amusing. Not just a little amusing, Eric laughed until he was forced to support his little pot belly with the aid of his hands on his knees, drooling all the while. And I began to laugh with him. He was right, after all. I had no good reason to be so serious about the toy cow, or so bothered by his naïve ridicule. So we laughed.

Somehow this laughter allowed me the space to breathe more deeply than I thought possible. I drank in his joy and felt it spread through my own body like an airborne contagion. “How do you see things so clear and simple?” I asked him. Without another sound Eric’s grin grew to rival that of the Cheshire cat and he let himself fall, arms open wide, towards me, as if to answer “Like this.”