We were heading up to the lass’ dance lessons and the lass was working on an apple. She’d been bugging me for some kind of snack to hold her over until dinner, which wouldn’t be until after her dance lessons were done. I told her to grab an apple. I don’t know why I still have to tell her stuff like that- anytime we have fruit available (which is always) that’s my goto answer for the “Can I have a snack?” query.
Anyway, she’d eaten the lower half of her apple all the way around and she turned to me and asked “Daddy, what does this look like?”
I glanced over and all I saw was a partially eaten apple.
Perhaps it was because my mind was on the road and also thinking ahead to the remainder of my evening. Having to get the boy to his karate lessons, then pick them both up and get them some dinner. Follow that with spelling review and whatever surprises the evening might hold in store and, well, I wasn’t being very creative.
Mostly, though, I think all I saw was a half-eaten apple because I’m an adult.
“I don’t know,” was the lame reply I gave her.
She then held it up in front of herself and said “I think it looks like a parachuter, a mushroom and an umbrella.”
I looked over at her and the apple and thought “She’s right, it does look like any one of those things.”
Whimsy is something that comes naturally to kids. Give them blocks and they’ll create a castle. Stick them in a sand box and they’ll make mountains and chairs and whatever else they can think up. Give them blankets and pillows and they make forts. Give them pencil and paper and only they can explain that thing they just drew with fire coming out of it’s nose and multiple heads.
Kids do stuff like that and they make the world fun. Or if not the world, then at least the moment. Driving along looking at the lass’ half-eaten apple I couldn’t help smiling a little at the silliness of her observations. For all the frustrations that comes with having kids, moments like these have a lot to do with making it worth those frustrations.
Who knows. Maybe, perhaps, I’ll never see an apple the same way.