Courtney McGrail"My, how you’ve grown – look at the size of you!” Thankfully, most polite people stop making such exclamations once we reach adulthood. However, for children, expressions of amazement at their having grown are an everyday thing. Underlying these commonplace exclamations is the joy we feel that the child is thriving and growing. We sense in this the beauty of life.
As we rush headlong into summer, all nature is now thriving and growing around us. Generous canopies of fresh leaves burst forth in the trees above us. Blossoms open their bright faces to the sun. Warm twilight lingers into the bird-sung night.
The children are soon to be released from the school year into the freedom and languor of summer.
When they return again in autumn, they will be taller, stronger and ruddier, full of tales of summer adventures. But, for them, there are no thoughts yet that their return to school is just a couple of months away; for them, the summer ahead seems infinite, brimming with countless warm days.
Summers
We adults recall with a pang the gold-tinted summers of our childhoods. We know how fast they pass and how years slip away ever-faster, like water through our fingers. Our bodies no longer grow taller. As we reach the age when athletes retire, our bodies have already begun to slow. If we are to thrive again, we must seek inward growth. Yet in an age when there are many competing ideas of what is good, who can teach us to grow again?
Our children become our teachers. They teach us patience, love and kindness. They remind us that, even on a bad day, life can be full of joy, jokes and fun. They remind us that every moment can be transformed: a walk to the bus stop is an adventure and the daily cycle to school is magical – if we live it fully, as they do.
Insects and slugs can become things of wonder. Seán has a particular affection for caterpillars, which he regularly captures and keeps as pets in carefully decorated jars.
Thanks to this, we’ve seen small caterpillars weave chrysalises and hang quietly for weeks before emerging as butterflies. When those caterpillars begin the task of spinning themselves a cocoon, covering themselves in goo, they have no idea of the transformation that awaits them.
Parents too, when their first child arrives, begin to become covered in goo and nor do we understand exactly how much parenthood is going to transform us.
Our children give us a lot, but we parents give a lot too. We trade money, opportunity and freedom for sleepless nights, work and worry. But even as you change your millionth nappy, make yet another school lunch, arbitrate over another argument over who-pushed-who-first, or administer a dose of Calpol at 3am, you wouldn’t change it for the world.
Ultimately, as parents, we learn anew that it is in giving that we receive..