She would have been about three years old, feet dangling off the edge of the train seat like they were waving at the floor.
She stared out of the window – “What’s that, mummy?” as we passed a station, then some street art, then a café, a shipping container and a billboard advertising an adult shop.
Mum answered patiently, putting her phone away whilst caught up in all this wondering.
“Why is that lady in a wheel chair, mummy? Look, he’s got a beard like unca Dave. Those boys are holding hands like you and Daddy do. Are those people going to the airport? That tree has no leaves – it’s like it has no clothes on (giggles).”
I realised again (probably for the nth time this week) that my adult brain had stopped noticing all these things. The very things that are the most wonder-ful in our world, the things that the three year old sees, I’ve forgotten to notice and wonder about.
In a world that is so busy, I can commute for 30 minutes with my head over a book/committee paper/Facebook and not lift my head to see the wonder around me.
I need that three-year-old (all the three-year-olds around me) to notice that leaf, the yellow car, the young man with the ‘funny hat’.
So I pause … I wonder why he chose that hat today; how they made the face of William Barack in the metal on outside of the towering building; what Jesus might say to the tired looking woman in the wheelchair (and what I might say if I got the chance).
Someone suggested that we might give attention rather than pay attention. Others suggest that this is called mindfulness. Today it’s simply the world through the eyes of a three year old with feet waving at the floor and a mum who joins her in her wondering.