My two year old son was so excited that we were going to the ocean that he couldn’t sleep the night before. “Idemo na more!” (Serbian for “We’re going to the beach,”) he kept calling out from his bed.
When we got there, he took me by the hand and pulled me to take him to the ocean. We got to a gate and he called out “Abre,” which, as he has learned from Go Diego Go, causes gates to open. Once through, he ran as fast as his little legs could carry him toward the ocean.
And then we were on the beach. I asked him if he wanted to walk or to sit and he said he wanted to walk. But once we’d gone over the last little drop-off and were near the water, he sat down. I sat down next to him and he slid over close to me, snuggled up against me. I put my arm around him and started asking him if he liked just looking out over the water and listening to the waves crash. Then, I realized, “what in the world am I doing?” I’m trying to teach this perfect being to appreciate something that he already appreciates with a mindfulness, a fullness, a calm, a peace, a quiet, and a tranquillity to which I can only aspire.
So I stopped talking. And we sat there in silence for about 10 minutes, looking out over the ocean and listening to the waves crash.
My son is rarely quiet, rarely not in motion. But for this, to drink in the transcendent beauty of the ocean, both he and I sat in quiet wonderment.
Finally, as if to signal that the time for sitting had come to an end, my son said “the waves crash,” stood up and said ”swimming water” (the pool) and started his walk back.
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