Granddaughter Emma, now 6.
Granddaughter Holly, 13, applies makeup to her cousin, Emma, 6.
Some time between birth and the inevitable cynicism of the school yard years, children pass through an age when reality has not yet been nailed down to a firm scientific rationality, and they are at the center of a wondrous world in which anything is possible.
It’s at this age, maybe 4 years old, that a child looking out of the car window at night may be astonished to discover that the moon is actually following the car, dashing along the rooftops and flashing through the trees as it goes.
Tooth fairies and Santa Claus inhabit this wonderful world. Monsters lurk in closets. When I was that age I forced myself to stay awake on Christmas Eve, craning to look out my bedroom window at neighboring rooftops in hopes of catching a glimpse of a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.
Now it takes my grandkids to remind me what that distant world was like.
When granddaughter Emma was 4, I was helping her learn to ride her bike with training wheels around the cul de sac in front of my house. It was evening, a cool beautiful time. Crickets were chirping loudly.
She wheeled away from me, rounded the corner and triumphantly made it back to the house, a delighted grin on her face.
“Did you hear the crickets cheering for me riding my bike?” she beamed.
That same delightful little girl was fascinated with the story of Peter Pan, and watched the video over and over. Her questions about a boy who could fly were so persistent that her mother was worried she might try something rash, like leaping from a tall fence.
“Nobody can fly,” her mother told her sternly.
Unconvinced, especially concerning her grandpa, who, everyone knows, can do anything, she asked one last question:
“OK, but can Papa fly?”
