Let the Little Children Come

There is an elderly woman who lives right next door.  My girls just love her because of her gentle spirit and her obvious enthusiasm every time she sees them.  At first, when we would see our neighbor I was very careful to limit how long my girls could stay in front of our house chatting with her.   I wrongly assumed that their VERY loud, constant chatter would annoy her eventually and so I would hurry them inside after just a few minutes of chatting with her.

But, as time has gone on, I've begun to watch their interactions, and I've realized something: our neighbor loves talking with my girls.  She isn't in a rush, in fact, recently she had surgery and she can't go very far from home without being in pain.  The girls are actually a welcome distraction in her day.

So, yesterday I let them chat with her for as long as they wanted to.  I saw her telling them about the flowers in her garden, bringing out her puppy for them to pet, and even pulling out an old jewelry box to adorn them with some of her favorite costume jewelry (which she later gifted to them!)   If only we would all take the time that children take to really see others; to engage with people without a timeline or agenda. 

My girls came home yesterday feeling like queens, adorned in what they considered fine jewels and yapping on and on about their time with our neighbor, picking flowers and petting her puppy.  And I can see that as she walked toward her house, she was smiling a smile bigger than I've seen her smile in months.