the beautiful world of children

As I sat on a park bench yesterday evening, watching Nick play with other kids of all colors, my breath caught in my throat and my heart swelled in my chest. Such innocence, such openness - it literally took my breath away. One benefit of living in a military community is that Nick is surrounded by kids of many colors, of many nationalities, and gets to hear lots of different languages. (The other day at the same park, I heard Russian to my left and Portuguese to my right.) I will sorely miss that when we move to the very white Springfield area. Anyway, I watched as Nick played with a little black boy, and it just amazed me that these kids didn't notice what color each other was and certainly didn't care. To them, the other was simply another child to play with - a new friend. As Nick approached this boy with a smile and said "I'm Nick - what's your name?", and then invited him to play, I thought about what a wonderful world this could be if only all grown-ups could have the same color-blindness. Sometimes, we need to pay attention to the lessons we can learn from our beautiful, sweet, wise children.