Simple Moments
One of Dyson’s favorite bath-time activity is to take a cup of water and pour it over my hands. He’ll just keep on doing this, over and over, in the way that only a two year-old can.
Usually, we’ll sit in the bath until I start to get cold and then I’ll tell him that bath time is over. But the other day, I was just struck by how happy he was to do this simple thing. It wasn’t like the iPad or watching TV. There were no singing dinosaurs or flashing lights. He just liked watching the water. Sometimes he would make me cup my hands, sometimes he would stack them. But he was always watching the water.
It occurred to me that as an adult, I had lost the capacity to appreciate these quiet moments. And at some point, Dyson’s going to grow up and move on to more interesting things than hanging out with his dad. It wouldn’t always be like this. So I decided to try to just … be present.
So I sat with him; long past the point where the water had become tepid, my knees starting to ache, my skin already beyond raisin-stage and starting to approach shar pei. But I didn’t mind. We just sat there playing with the water until he said, “Ok. All done.”
