We are blessed to have our grandson staying with us this month. He is such a great kid 7 going on 40. He is smart, intelligent, creative, kind, compassionate and wise beyond his years.
Yesterday, I took him to the playground and watched him play. Play he did, climbing up down and all around the various aspects of the structure.
There were other children at the playground, kids his age, some younger, some older and he started interacting with them and playing with them. They would climb, run, slide, create games.
It was freeing to watch and freeing for him to just be a kid. I sat and watched with tears rolling down my face, why because I am so blessed to have this little man in my life. He has taught me so much. He has taught me how to love unconditionally, how to be compassionate and show empathy.
As I watched I reflected back on my own childhood experiences which for the most part were not pleasant. Around the same age as Ollie I was playing at a playground and they had something called monkey bars which were these metal bars twisted together in a dome like structure. I started to climb these and fell off them. The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital bed. I ended up with a bump on my head and a scar under my chin and decades of fear.
For the coming days, weeks and years after this event I was in constant fear of these bars and to a greater extent the whole playground experience. The presence of fear was placed over me that these playgrounds were dangerous and bad things can happen be visiting them.
Unfortunately, it took me a long time to overcome my fear of the playground. It wasn't until Ollie came along and I recognized that the only fear is the fear we place on ourselves. Is there an inherent risk yes. However, we don't need to get hung up about this risk.
Back to the present watching Ollie and the other kids, at one stage they found a tennis ball and started playing catch when one of the boys left, Ollie invited me to play catch with him and the others.
So often we get hung up on all the stresses of life that we forget to create time to play and just be a kid.
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