To Be A Child

I was in the playground on duty today when a young boy told me that he had a sore eye.  I squatted down so that I could look him in the eye and asked him to cover his eye and count to 10 which he did very easily.  I then "challenged" him to count to 20 and he proudly did that and I praised him and told him how clever he was.  He looked so pleased with himself, I told him to cover only his other eye and count to 50 which he did quickly and eagerly.  As I put one knee to the ground, I still had one knee up which he decided would be a good place to sit.  I  looked again at his eye and said, "Oh you're better now!" and he smiled and ran away to play with his friends. 

Sometimes when I see  TV shows that I watched when I was younger, it takes me back to that time of innocence and childlikeness and it makes me feel wistful and a little sad that we grow up and have our hearts broken and our minds are filled with so much more information and it's not all good.   I watched an interview on Henry Winkler the other day who found out he had dyslexia and now visits schools and writes books to encourage children to keep growing to be the best they can be.  We all grow up and as we step along the journey of our lives, we are affected by our personal experiences, our relationships and by circumstances that sometimes, we have no control over. 

Teaching children seems a very noble profession and there are times when we get to admire the innocence of young children, feel honoured to be able to influence their lives and recognise the responsibility we have to help them grow towards adulthood.  There are also other times when teaching is hard work and our feelings towards the child who forever seems to test our patience or who seems to constantly challenge our purpose in teaching is not quite so altruistic.  Today my students decided when we visited the school farm to do some weeding in preparation for our vegetable garden, that they would prefer to look for snails and feed them to the chooks rather than pull up weeds to feed them.  When a child saw a spider, the call would cry out and the children would drop their shovels, garden forks and whatever else they had in order to gather around and decide what type of spider it was, whether it was poisionous and whether or not it should be stepped on or fed to the ducks and hens.  (Admittedly, not ALL the children were thus engaged but I claim writer's licence which includes the right to embellish in order to engage the reader's attention.)

As we were going out of the classroom a boy saw the rings on my left hand and decided to question me: 
Are you married?  Yes, I was, but he passed away. 
How old was he?  Older than me. 
Was he 46?  No, because I am 46.  
Are you going to get married again?  Not that I know of. 
Do you think that all dogs go to heaven?

Seriously, that was the order of the questions he asked. 

When I teach, it would be nice to have a class full of students who sit quietly, listen, and are eager to learn and yet, the students I have now are typical of their age group and are still teachable.  And perhaps, I really wouldn't like perfect students after all.  Then I wouldn't be able to sing, "What will this day be like, I wonder....?"

So often I wish life was different and wish I could just cruise through life and have everything fall into place but as the quote says, "It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all."  Still, it hurts.  I feel sick and it's not because I am sick.  I feel like I am observing life around me.  I'm standing on the edge of the crowd watching people bustle by, busy with their lives, doing happy things, falling in love, having fun family vacations, getting on with their lives.   Sometimes it's hard to shake the loss, the grief and the pain and get on with life but I do. 

Speaking of doing, I have some work to do before bed and hey, I might even tuck into some chocolate while I work.  Thanks for listening.