About a decade ago I glanced into my middle daughter’s room and found her sitting on her knees, looking out the window with her favorite toys lined up on the windowsill. They were all there: Her blanket - which had a personality and a loose seam for a mouth, various plush animals, a number of Disney characters, a group of small horses, and an assortment of other figures. She had turned her little friends toward the glass as if they were all looking out into the front yard together. She was talking with them, perhaps drawing their attention to something in the yard, or maybe holding court on any number of intimate subjects.

I immediately froze and did not make a sound. This was my second child, so I was an experienced enough parent to know a precious and unrepeatable thing when I saw it. I leaned against the door frame, then let my body slide slowly down the frame until I was on my knees.

She talked to her toys, jabbering about one thing and then another. She moralized, corrected, parented, acted out parts. She was lost in the Kingdom of Shelby, a place made up of bits and pieces of her life tossed about in her mind and dreams. Her kingdom was not governed by rules or laws or physics. The glue holding Shelby’s kingdom together was her own frail and developing view of the world. It was an infantile worldview without borders or categories, at least none that you or I would recognize.

I say “was” because Shelby is now a teen-ager, so she has been banished from the Kingdom of Shelby except at night when all the old things return from the deep waters and shadowed forests of dreaming.

All children have their own play world, and they are able to lose themselves in it. The state of play exists before consciousness. It is an indescribable and intensely personal thing for a child to be deep in play. And if they find they are being watched, they will come back from that world and become shy or start performing. Either way, the magic is lost.

I was getting a peek into the Kingdom of Shelby, and you can bet I wasn’t going to miss the show. I listened, leaning against the doorframe, absolutely enraptured by the sounds of her play. I suppose I was as lost in the moment as she was.

I would have stayed for hours. You couldn’t have dragged me away. Eventually a prolonged silence caused me to open my eyes. She was looking at me with a smile.

“Hi Daddy.”

She was friendly, but clearly waiting for me to leave so that she could go back to her world. I had intruded, and it was time for me to go. Shelby was a kindly landowner who would let you pick an apple and give you a cold drink if you wandered onto her property, but she would definitely show you the way to the gate.

I knew that about her. And I knew there was no use trying to prolong the moment or – God forbid – trying to recreate it.

I was drawn to my little girls in those days in ways that are quickly fading as the three sisters grow into young women. Our biological connection showed itself in my love of the smell of their scalps, my physical and intense need to hold them, and my desire to feel their small bodies pressed against my own as we watched movies together on the couch. And I always had a strong attraction to the sounds they made. Their voices were a kind of OM for me, a sound from below all sounds, a noise from the foundation of my existence. Hearing my daughters play was a joyful thing, and the ache of its absence will never heal. It is a wound I will carry as long as I walk this earth.

The best things are like this, aren’t they? They are savage and untamed. Like a great sunset, they can be discovered by chance and enjoyed, but never owned. Like love they can be received but not bought. The best things in life ride a ticklish wave along the surface of your skin, leaving raised hairs in their wake. They move through the world leaving no visible sign. You cannot follow them, nor anticipate their direction and wait for them in a blind.

You will come across spontaneous, unique moments of joy like this now and again. They are Life’s gifts to us all. They come to the washed and the unwashed, to the common and the sophisticated, to the rich and the poor, to the just and the unjust.

Moments of savage joy are there for all of us to find. If you haven’t seen one lately, you only need to slow down a bit and keep your eyes open. I can give you no counsel beyond that. But if you come across a moment of wild, untamed joy, for God’s sake eat it; drink it; hear it; receive it. This is the stuff of life. It doesn’t get any better.

rlp