How do you Relate to a Child?

Well, I’ll tell you right off that when you’re a child yourself the job is made easier. But when you think of it as we’re all permanent children, that none of us ever fully grow up, and if we did, that in itself would be strange, because how can anyone graduate from being a child? It is not possible — then it’s very reassuring.

One thing that’s very important is being self indulgent.

The tiny one wants gratification immediately. He wants it with no agenda, just wants to be happy RIGHT NOW with no quantizations or rules. But when you look at it, isn’t that us, all of us, at all ages, even at 50, at which mark I find myself? You just want a warm place with warm hearts and some — any — loving presence to watch over you while you sleep, and just a knowledge that the Great Big World is not going to go away any time soon.

I used to deal with kids with joking and maybe even trying to scare them, because I saw them so powerfully in me. I had no connect button, no reason to treat them as kids, because I was so concentrating on how to make my own kidself an adult. I divorced myself from them because I hated their kid-dom, that it was vaguely scary how random they would be, how arbitrary, and I felt the subtle chaos that that represented.

But now, at age 50, I want to be like them. Secretly, I know I never stopped being a kid, there was always a tiny kid in me who just never went away, but now it’s just amazing to talk to a kid, as if they’re an ambassador from your own past, that they can explain your life to you in a way that you just simply can’t any more. It’s an incredible window that shines with a light that you only wish still made your life resonate.

I guess I’m just preaching to the choir but when I think of my son I’m so glad he happened and when I’m pathetically old and grey (read: now) I hope he still loves me. He’s a little kid but whether or not he knows it, he’s me, I’m him, and we’re always going to be little kids together.

Please pass the ketchup.