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
