A Child's Joy

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

She was just a baby, maybe a year old, sitting in the back seat of a car traveling along Route 128 a week ago. I never saw her before and I'll probably never see her again. I know nothing about her - not her name or where she lives, or where she was going, or whom she was with, though I assume the woman driving was her mother.

I only glanced at her as I was speeding past. But the glimpse made me smile and pause and reflect. It makes me smile still, days later, because she was so full of naked wonder that it was like walking along a street in the cold past a store whose door opens briefly and blankets you with warmth.

She had on a pink hat, tied under her chin, and a bulky pink coat, but no mittens. Her two baby hands were bare and pressed against the car's side window, as was her nose. But it was her eyes from which the warmth came.

The day was ugly, gray, dull. The road was gray, too; even the cars looked gray, covered with a twilight film. But there she was absorbing it all, as if a host of fairy princesses pirouetted and played before her.

What did she see that I didn't? What made her mouth curl up and her eyes sparkle? I looked around and saw too much traffic and another fading day. The brake lights were stuck on the car in front of me. A truck was flying past on the left. Exhaust fumes penetrated even the closed windows. The radio was full of news about breakdowns and delays. I turned to glance at the child again, but there was only empty space beside me. Already she was a car length away.

I wondered then, and I wonder still, if on another day I would have even noticed her? I don't think so. In the fall, when the weather is perfect, an open shop door neither warms nor cools. A pedestrian could walk past and never notice the door, because she would not feel the sudden change in temperature.

It was the contrast that gripped me. The child's joy stood out because it stood alone. All that day I had been talking to tired people with vacant or bored or annoyed eyes. I had seen not a flicker of joy, not a trace of wonder, in any adult I'd encountered.

And yet, until I saw the child, this fact eluded me. Clenched teeth seemed a natural part of the landscape. Christmas still loomed. Everyone was stressed, preoccupied, a little grumpy, a little on edge. If joy had come up and tapped people on the shoulder, they probably wouldn't have felt it.

And yet here was this child so full of joy. It was inside her. It bubbled up and spilled over even on a sunless day. It was her natural state.

All human beings are born with this sense of wonder, with eyes charmed and amused by the world. But then we grow up and get a kind of glaucoma. We must. Why else do we stop seeing what children see?

Blow a bubble and a child will reach for it and laugh, and when it pops and disappears, he'll say "Do again," and when you do, he'll laugh again and want more.

Every bubble is a miracle. Every miracle is new.

Sing a song, in a terrible, tuneless voice, a silly song that makes no sense, and a child will beg to have it sung again. Read a story, make up one, make it pointless and it's the same thing: Constant wonder, unending appreciation.

The stars at night, snow in the morning, a flower on a vine, a bird flying past, a spoon and a pan, a blanket, a cookie, a smile - to a child, these simple things are a joy.

So when does the joy begin to lessen? When do we stop noticing the sky, the birds, the night air, the shape of the clouds, breath on a window? And why? It is this dulling of wonder, of appreciation for all that surrounds us, that is the real tragedy of age.

I have passed beauty and radiance in everyday things a million times, I am sure. Sped past, on the way to somewhere else. Sauntered past, absorbed in something else. Eyes on a destination, a goal, a prize.

That I noticed this child, this small stranger in the midst of the holiday rush, that her joy reached through glass and air and touched me is a bit of a miracle.

I looked up at the stars when I got out of the car that night. I lingered in the driveway, took deep breaths, inhaled the clear cold. I pictured that child's face, memorized it. And I smiled her smile as I walked into the house