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Daddy, That Lady Liked My Bike — The Gifts in Seeing People
My husband and I were walking the other afternoon and came to a small intersection. A man and his daughter had stopped their bikes at the corner. The man was bent over fixing something, but the little girl–who looked to be about four–watched us approach. I smiled at her warmly, and she smiled back shyly.
I said, “I like your bike. I like the decorations and the streamers. It’s very pretty.”
The dad looked up and gently urged his daughter to say thank you, which she did. As we walked away, I heard her say, “Daddy, that lady liked my bike!”
Lately I’ve been trying even harder to notice children, to let them feel seen. Sometimes it leads to some pretty funny conversations, and sometimes those go on longer than I would prefer, but always they give me a lift. That little girl was watching us walk toward her. She never took her eyes off us. We don’t always see kids, but they see us.
I worry about children a lot in this chaotic year of 2020. I worry about the big issues, like the children who are spending more time at home with dangerous parents, or the kids who are going hungry because their caregivers lost their jobs, or the children who are being separated from their parents. But I also worry about the admittedly more privileged kids who are missing out on opportunities…
