Chelsea was at the children's park when she called to do a video chat with me. Olivia was cheering my name, and I felt she wanted to jump in the screen. I know I did; her smile was adorably contagious. Gabriel, I could see sitting crossed leg on a bench in the background; he had a very serious look, not mad, but profound. I asked him, "What are you thinking about?" He was concentrating too hard to answer, so Chelsea told me,
"He is busy thinking about lines."
I smiled, and while waiting to hear more from Gabriel, I soaked up sweet moments with Olivia, who put her face so close to the screen to be close to me that I only saw her forehead and nothing else.
After a while, Gabriel came around. As soon as he saw me, he said, "Oh, Vavie, what a beautiful sweater you have on." I thanked him, and we continued talking.
Children are clever, and their responses and learning are fascinating in how they sum up life around them and say things in such blatant truth. My friend Cheryl in Australia, who is a kindergarten teacher, told me that when she asked the little ones to describe a person, a little girl raised her hand and said, "My dad, he is a man; he has a penis." Children give me hope for the future because their minds are eager and innocent, and they search for knowledge and try out their learning with play and questions.
Chelsea was at the children's park when she called to do a video chat with me. Olivia was cheering my name, and I felt she wanted to jump in the screen. I know I did; her smile was adorably contagious. Gabriel, I could see him sitting cross-legged on a bench in the background; he had an earnest look, not mad, more profound. I asked him, "What are you thinking about?" He was concentrating too hard to answer, so Chelsea told me,
"He is busy thinking about lines."
I smiled, and while waiting to hear more from Gabriel, I soaked up sweet moments with Olivia, who put her face up to the screen to be closer to me so that I only saw her forehead and nothing else.
After a while, Gabriel came around. When he saw me, he said,
"Oh, Vavie, what a beautiful sweater you have on." I thanked him, and we continued talking.
Children are clever, and their responses and learning are fascinating, especially how they sum up life around them and say things in such blatant truth. My friend Cheryl in Australia, who is a kindergarten teacher, told me that when she asked the little ones in her class to describe a person, a little girl blurted, "My dad, he is a man; he has a penis."
Children with their eagerness to learn, how they absorb knowledge with their innocent minds full of intrigue and insatiable curiosity in exploring their surroundings and how they come up with solutions and understanding through repetition, their boundless search for understanding how they try out their learning through play and questions.
I love being a witness to who they are and are becoming.
As I said farewell to Olivia, Chelsea, and Gabriel, I couldn't help but wonder about the world as they saw it. For a child, lines are the key to unlocking a whole new level of understanding. They reveal the hidden structures in construction, the beauty in art, the shape of form, and the logic of math. I imagined the world through his eyes, alive with the intricate complexity of everything around him – the towering buildings, long avenues that turn into winding roads, swaying trees, delicate stems, colorful building blocks, sparkling windows, the shapes of letters, furniture curves, and our bodies' unique form. It's a world full of wonder and endless possibilities waiting to be explored.
As soon as we hung up, it dawned on me that I had completely missed the compliment he gave about my sweater.
It has stripes.
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