Ants

We sit on the park bench under the pergola. He is eating a bag of potato chips and his big sister is playing on the swings.
"Are they good, Teddy?" I ask, by way of conversation. He nods, imperceptibly, the faintest inclination of his head, which says "Good is hardly the word. These things are absolutely delicious. Never, in all my years, all two of them, have I tasted anything as great as these." He spontaneously holds one up for me. He's that sort of kid.

Too soon the packet is finished.

"Teddy go on swing now," he says, more by way of information giving than of request.

He gives me the empty bag, jumps down off the seat and makes his way towards the swings, which involves him clambering across a row of large stones. I turn to put the packet into the trashcan when his voice rings out with increasing urgency,

"Papa," he calls. "PAPA!" I run to him, imagining that he has somehow fallen and got stuck or, maybe, hurt himself. He is lying, face down on one of the large rocks. I get to him and he turns to me, face lit with excitement. "Papa!", he says. Look!" Crawling across the rock, inches from his nose, is a single ant. A particularly small ant. He stares, transfixed by the sheer marvellousness of it. "Look Papa. Look!"

I squat down beside him. "It's called an ant, Teddy."
He tries the word out for himself. "Ant."
"See," I say, "there's another one. They are very small aren't they?"

And I have already begun the work of breaking his enchantment. I've given a name to this wonder. I've made its size and the number of them important factors in the definition of what it is. I've furthered the work of prising his attention away from the immediacy of the world and cocooning it in words, words and more words.

He rushes off and joins Ada on the big, circular swing. He is now onto his next experience but his amazement sits with me all that day, and in fact for most of the week since. Jesus said, Unless you become as one of these little children you cannot enter the Kingdom of God. An ant is a miraculous thing. How can a fully functioning digestive system and nervous system and respiratory system and reproductive system and little proto consciousness fit into a body so small? Teddy is absolutely right. It is gobsmackingly amazing. I am such a sophisticated man. I surround myself with words and drown myself in analysis and thought, and in doing so, I miss the language of the Universe. A language in which Teddy is fluent, and in which he will remain fluent until we all educate him out of it.

Comments

Elaine Dent said…

Loved this. Thank you. Mary Oliver once again: "Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." Teddy did all three. So simple. So foreign to us...at least the astonish part.

14 February 2020 at 08:06

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