One Fainting Robin

I remember as a child, riding on the train through the mountains near our town in Germany.  There, up high on a mountain above the train, stood a statue of a stag.  The statue wasn’t visible long, just for a moment, and I can still remember the wail of devastation when our friend’s little boy missed seeing it.  A pain made worse by the fact that his big brother and I had seen it.

I remember that wail so well, and have heard it often enough from my own children that I hesitate to point out things one of them might miss.  I’ll spot whatever it is that might be interesting to them, and then I’ll calculate how long I’ll have to tell each of my various forward and rear-facing car occupants, which way to look and what they will see.  And quite a few times, I’ve made the decision to keep it to myself, whatever interesting thing I’ve seen, sacrificing all their chances to see it in the hopes of preventing that wail.

We were driving to preschool this week, and to the right, I saw a woman walking a dog, only the dog was walking along a little garden wall.  I couldn’t resist.  “Look!” I cried, “Look at the dog walking on the garden wall!”

My five-year-old laughed in delight, but when I didn’t hear the same laughter from my three-year-old, I braced myself.  Instead of the wail, I heard his sweet little voice, “When we are coming back from preschool, I will see the dog walking on the wall.”  And I had to decide, would his disappointment be greater now, fresh in the moment of having missed the dog, or would it be worse later, having anticipated an opportunity that would never come.

“Oh, honey,” I said.  “The doggie won’t be there on our way home.  He’s going on a walk and won’t be in the same place.”

“But I didn’t get to seeeeee him!” began the wail, and I felt so sad for this poor sweet little guy who’d missed seeing the dog.  And then I remembered how the The Children of Noisy Village describe the world to their blind grandfather, and I had an idea.

“Do you want us to tell you about the dog so you can use your imagination to see him, bud?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he sniffled sorrowfully.

So his brother and I took turns.

“He’s black and white like Harry the Dirty Dog!”

“He looks a little like a bulldog!”

“He’s fat and when he takes a step his tail and his belly both swing from side to side!”

And my sad little guy wasn’t so sad any longer, he was giggling, exclaiming “He looked so funny!”

And just as delighted at his little brother’s joy, my five-year-old cried, “Can you see it, J-Man?  Can you see it in your imagination?”