Ground Level
The sunny day that we had been waiting for all week finally came, and with it, a nice breeze–the makings of a perfect walk in the park. After being cooped up for the past few days, I was excited to take my toddler for an afternoon in the fresh air.
There was a time when a trip to the park meant orchestrating an entire operation of getting things into the car–stroller, diaper bag, bottles, baby–but on this particular day, I found myself on autopilot. I had a system, and I could execute it with a toddler on my hip. Before we knew it, we were pulling into a spot in front of the park.
As autopilot would have it, I opened the trunk of our car to pull out our stroller. I heard an excited squeal and looked up to see my toddler thrashing like an alligator to get out of his car seat. Truthfully, I was almost impressed. With his excitement and near-escapee capabilities, I decided to forego the stroller. We had the place to ourselves, so I wanted him to walk around and burn off some of that alligator energy.
Bag on my back and stroller in the trunk, I pulled my son out of the car. As the wind hit his face and tousled his hair, his eyes frantically looked around, taking in his new surroundings. I brought him over to the dirt path, bracing to chase him at top toddler speeds, and put him down. He scanned his environment, took a few staggered steps, paused, and crouched down. He was playing with the dirt.
An entire park in front of him, and he wanted to play in the dirt. Instinctively, I rushed over to stop him because I didn’t want him to get messy. But as I approached, I noticed he wasn’t just digging his hands in or throwing it everywhere–he was picking up little handfuls and staring at them. With his near-perfect pincer grasp, he was picking up each little pebble and stone, separating the grains and studying them. It wasn’t what I expected exploration to look like, but he was learning.
We came here to run around, be loud, and burn energy. To see my son quietly and gently getting to know the ground beneath his feet touched my heart. I didn’t stop him. Instead, I crouched down beside him, trying to see what had captured his attention. Everything looks different at ground level.
From where I stood, it looked like dirt. From where he crouched, it looked like discovery.
Somewhere along the way, adulthood taught me to avoid messes. A little dirt meant more laundry, more cleanup, more work waiting for me at home. I became more concerned with keeping things neat and polished than allowing myself the messy process of learning something new.
Children learn by touching, scattering, testing, and feeling–by getting a little messy. Crouched beside my son on the dirt path, I’m not sure we ever outgrow that. When life gets messy, adults rush to fix it, clean it up, or avoid it altogether. But so many meaningful parts of life–love, grief, motherhood, identity, creativity, community–can only be understood by living through the messiness of them.
I scoot a bit closer to my son and softly ask what he’s up to. He babbles a bit and holds out a tiny pebble to put in my hand. After he places it in my palm, he springs up and moves on with the toddler speed I knew would come eventually—only to be stopped again. I catch up, pebble in hand, and see what caught his eye: a flower growing on the side of the path. He holds out one finger to curiously touch it, and I’m reminded of something adulthood made me forget.
Even flowers grow through dirt.
This essay was originally written for The American Canyon Current’s column: The Estuary Diaries
