Sunday, Mary and I had the pleasure of taking one of our grand daughters on a short road trip. Mary wanted to drive so I let the women sit in the front and our dog, Belle, and I shared the back. The trip was pleasant enough but I had a great view out the side window at the developing thunder storm.
Pointing to the cloud pictured above I called to Grand Daughter to look at the fire breathing bear! “Wow.” she responded! “Maybe it’s a Wisconsin bear seeing it’s frozen breath in the winter? Or, it could be a giant fish ready to gobble up a tasty morsel of seafood.”
I liked fire breathing bear best, you may have your own description; I guess it doesn’t matter what It looks like to any of us. The point is kids of every age, even a multi-decade age like mine, need to have time to lie on the grass or the frozen snow and look at the pictures the clouds are drawing in the sky. What a great way to enrich our imagination. Which of us has not arranged the letters in a bowl of alphabet soup to read a word or two? Or re-arranged the food on our plate to see piece of art? I’m always surprised to see a beautiful, red billed, blue-eyed eagle in my spoon when I eat straw berries and blue berries with my morning cereal.
When I was a school boy, yes they had clouds way back then, my teacher was always calling me back for what ever imaginary place I was visiting to pay attention to what she was trying to teach. (Now days kids like that would be “treated” with Ritalin). Now I am replacing my old bench in my garden/lawn so I can have a place under the sky to visit my daydreams when I’m alone. No, I’m not trying to avoid reality, thought that is a temptation, I’m trying to imagine what the future might hold for me if I dare to go where my dreams take me.
Do we allow ourselves and our kids time to day dream? Or, do we all keep busy listening to our I-pods, texting, or surfing that we fail to hear and see our future through our imaginations? And we might ask ourselves are we so busy playing with our electronic devises that we ignore, not only our imagination, but also those people in our immediate time and space?
Mary and I are so glad that this grand daughter was polite enough to spend the time we were together, with us! Yes, she did answer a text or two, but she was not rude about it. She really spent the time with us, and we are grateful!