perspective

I remember very distinctly one day while I was working at a coffee shop (Starbucks, cough cough, hence the addiction) a mom came up to the counter holding her three year old. Look mommy, palm trees!! She was so excited and so proud to have recognized such a thing there in Maryland, and her mom had no idea what she was talking about. The girl pointed behind me a few more times, and when the mom realized what her daughter was talking about, she replied, No, sweetie, those are stacks of cups. Lo and behold, behind me we had stacked the cups high in preparation for our morning rush, and they were leaning over à la palm trees, each cup forming the segmented trunk. And I have never looked at a stack of cups the same again.

I can't imagine what it must be like as a child to see things quite literally from a different perspective. Stacks of cups look like pictures straight out of a story book. Letters don't form words, they form shapes. Teddybears are babies and orange peels make great body decorations. Strawberries pictured on the back cover of a magazine are the most important part of the entire issue. It's not just that children have an effortless imagination - they have yet to step inside the box that constrains most of our adult thoughts.

Today Miss Seven Hours of Sleep Isn't Enough (I could have told her that last night when she refused to go to bed) needed some cuddle time, so I picked up a gardening book and sat in the rocker to read to myself. Five minutes later when Bella perked up and got a hold of my book, she started leafing through it. Imagine my surprise when she started pointing at a pictureless book, repeating, Moon! Now it was my turn to be the confused mom as I looked down at a giant letter C starting the paragraph. And I happily agreed with her, why not? It looked just like a crescent moon.