I guess I would have gone with, "My nose is numb" or something like that. She totally schooled me. "It hurts right here," she managed to get out between her sobs. "It feels bad like if you have a really huge sneeze or if you just woke up from a dream."
Yes. That is EXACTLY how it feels, Caroline. Like you just woke up from a dream. A really intense dream that for some reason was robbed of its power over you and suddenly you lift your head from the pillow in a daze and your face is arrested with a feeling akin to being hit in the face with a big rubber ball.
Caroline is a unique type of human that you can find in any parish: a child. A 10-year-old child sitting in the nurse's office trying to explain to me how the soccer ball to the face is affecting her afternoon.
She was exhibiting a special talent that young people have: honesty so honest that they don't even know how honest it is. She's hurt, and she wants to communicate how it feels. So she uses her memories, and doesn't dress a single word with any anticipation of "what they're looking for."
She just scoops up the world around her, and pours it all back out at you. Like children do.
Kids are impressionable. Scary impressionable. I led music at Vacation Bible School. I found myself in front of 60 kids singing songs I haven't heard since I attended vacation bible school myself. 15 minutes with the kids, teaching them the signs to "Shine, Jesus Shine" and "Awesome God" and "Father Abraham had many sons".
Andrew has two kids in VBS. This afternoon, I visited Andrew's house. I kinda had to, on account of I broke his clavicle a couple weeks ago.
Yes, I broke his collarbone
No, I didn't do it on purpose.
Yes, I feel bad.
No, his wife IS NOT pleased with me.
So he has three kids and the whole family is moving tomorrow. He got bunk beds from IKEA for the girls and (due to the busted clavicle) he couldn't set it up on his own. So I went over to help.
I got there, and the girls were singing songs from VBS earlier.
"Our God is an awesome God."
Pause 3 seconds...
"Our God is an awesome God."
Repeat. Over and over again. Every three seconds. For 2 hours. "It could be worse," I told Andrew. And my mind went back a week to Debi's van. She was taking us out to dinner. I got in the van, closed the door, and buckled up.
"Josh?" says the 4-year-old voice in the back seat.
"Yes Sammy?"
"Do you wanna hear the song I made up?"
Creativity. Must encourage. Early and often. "OF COURSE I'd love to hear it!"
(to the second line of the tune 'Father Abraham Had Many Sons') "And many sons had Faaaather Taco." Pause 3 seconds. "And many sons had Faaaather Taco." Repeat.
"That's very nice Sam!" I said, trying to end his performance. But it didn't work. He kept repeating it. Then his mother turned around and looked at me. The look was accusative. She's blaming me. Clearly, he'd been singing this over and over for hours.
Kids are tender and impressionable, especially when you're an adult who listens to them and treats them like another adult. Those are the one's I've remembered. Like Cousin Kristie, who sat with me for hours listening to me talk about 5-year-old stuff. She was 25 at the time. She told me we could get married, which I agreed to of course. Marriage meant that she was special, and that our friendship was unique and no one else could understand us.
(I remember when she actually married Tim. I felt betrayed. My parents wouldn't let me go to the wedding because they were seriously worried I was going to shout "I object!" [I was a wonderful child])
But Kristie treated me like an adult. She listened to me and laughed at my stories, and she asked me questions that other adults only asked each other. And whatever she said was law, and some of those laws stayed with me until today.
Aware of this, I'm always hyper-conscious around children. I'm always assessing the situation for ways that I can share with them a piece of advice about building blocks or legos that is shrouded in a deeper profundity that they'd only understand if they remembered the phrase when they're older.
Yes, I'm trying to manufacture deep moments 15 or 20 years down the road.
It's kind of fun, really. At any moment, they might soak in what I just said. The thought goes in their ears and plants itself somewhere in the folds of their brain, where it comes out from time to time. And in 20 years when the thought pops out again, they might realize I wasn't just talking about tying shoelaces. I was trying to communicate to them some deep secrets of life.
(Then there are times when I abuse this power. Like yesterday, when the drama teacher had the kids saying practice Masses and I paced around the room telling each little boy that he looked really cool as a priest. Shameful, I know.)
God does this too, you know. Seemingly insignificant things like sunsets or tadpoles growing legs turn out to hold an immense wealth of truth, and you didn't even know it.
Children. I wish that teaching them how to write didn't coincide with the cultural connivance to destroy their innocence. What beautiful stories they could write! Truths of the world so plainly recorded that the sentences would be uncomfortable to read. If only they could write stories before they're shaped by their parents' offhand comments or the TV commercials or the shrewd encouragements of a seminarian.
I'd read that book.
Twice, probably.
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