I’m a Lion

“I’m a lion!” Calvin exclaims running out of the bathroom, the little toilet seat he uses held up around face like a mane, pure joy radiating from his adorable face. 

I stand frozen in place, the dinner plate I'm holding suspended in mid-air as I try to process what is happening and figure out a response. 

It’s these moments where you’re really tested as a parent. Pulled between the nearly all-consuming desire to burst out laughing and also the need to dissuade your child from putting their face inside a used toilet seat. Knowing that the harder I laugh, the more likely it is that my silly boy will continue doing this, pushes me simultaneously to want to laugh more and also contain myself. I know my husband, standing behind me, is in the same boat and thankfully he pulls it together more quickly than I do. 

This is a moment that he and I have laughed about numerous times since and will likely bring up for many years to come. 

The ability to look at the world not as it is, but as what you can create with it, is a gift that very few adults possess. If we were all able to view it through the lens of a child though, what would we see? What could we create? What new ideas would come forward? 

As I grow older I find that I have filled my days with less fun, less imagination. Until having children, I had forgotten the joy of playing make believe. I hadn't made a fort in ages. I had nearly stopped creating, barely writing at all. But the imagination of a child, the creativity they have with an ordinary object, is something to behold and it inspires those around them.

So while I’m not going to be putting my face in a toilet seat any time soon, nor will I encourage my boy to do it, I do commend him for his creativity.