One of the most rewarding advantages to being a grandmother is perhaps reliving the innocence of youth. Children have a way of looking at things that we adults have forgotten ever existed. Delilah spent the night with me last night and we were on the patio behind the house. As normal, she wanted to feed the fish in the fish pond, or the "shish" as she calls them. She was leaning over the side of the pond looking for the goldfish, who must have retired for the evening, when I saw a tiny green inchworm-type creature on the side of the railing of the pond. Pointing the little worm out to Dee, she immediately went to retrieve her butterfly net, which hangs on a little nail down low where she can reach it. She wanted me to get the worm into the net so she could put him over in the garden where he could go back to his"shamily" (family).
This little ritual was repeated just a short time later when we were in the Laundry Room, where a cricket had wandered in. Again, it was "Grammy, I need my butterfly net!" After getting the butterfly net, we scooped the little cricket up into the net and promptly returned him to the outside world, where we released him to be reunited with his loved ones (or at least that's what she thought).
Children have such a wonderful way of looking at the world around us that we as adults are too busy to even see sometimes. Their innocence and honesty is our natural state as human beings; it is the responsibilities in life that are hung around our necks in the process of growing up that makes us forget this.
