Ain't No Mountain High Enough

Perhaps it's not that our children grow up that makes us sad, but rather that they lose all the great qualities of childhood: innocence, belief, and imagination being some of them.
The other day C explained to me how he thought God made mountains.
"He poked his fingers up and pushed them out of the ground," he said.
Then he said that God must have made Mount Everest with his longest finger. He elaborated by showing me which finger that was, thereby flipping me off in the name of creation. I looked around for Alan Funt and the hidden cameras, but because he's five, he was being totally sincere. I thought that it will be sad someday when somebody tells him that's an inappropriate gesture. Of course by then he'll have forgotten the day he used the gesture to explain how mountains were made. Maybe I should have told him but I didn't. Not yet.
Today we were driving down to Peterson Farm and I could see him in my rear view mirror. He was turned around in the back seat of the car looking out. We were stopped at a traffic light and the man in the car behind us was tapping rhythmically on his steering wheel. C lifted his hand and gave a little wave. Knowing we have tinted windows and that the man didn't see my son made me sad. How insular we've become. On the one hand it's great to have built-in tinted windows and to know the sun isn't beating down on my children. H was always ripping the suction cup pull-down shades we used on the Subaru. But here was my eldest son trying to wave to people in surrounding cars, something that every kid has done, and he can't do it. Remember how great it was when the occasional driver would wave back? And the driver too, he missed out, though he doesn't know it. A greeting from a five year old is nothing substantial really, but charming enough to be uplifting, if only briefly, on a gray March morning.

Song: Ain't No Mountain High Enough • artist: Diana Ross