Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Day's End (01/01/14)
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TITLE: I feel like Dancing | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
01/08/14 -
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“Have you ever danced with a porcupine?” I coax.
“No, that would be too prickly.”
“How about an invisible elephant? Do you think you could dance with an invisible elephant?”
“No, cause you can’t see him.”
“What if it was a princess elephant?”
Eyes pop wide. “Yeah. She could wear a princess dress and twirl around and around. And we could play music and eat popcorn and pick flowers.”
It’s called neoteny. I shamelessly use my granddaughter to smuggle it into my heart at the end of a trying day. Neotony can be reframed as that playfulness, curiosity, fearlessness, energy, warmth, innocent fantasy, and boundless belief that stimulates the child-likeness inside us. It’s the extension of our youthfulness.
Logically, it should spring up with the sunrise at the start of a new day. Practically, it gets washed away in the blur and busyness of the whirl and dizziness of reality. Wonderfully, it gets rebirthed in the brilliant glow of pinks and purples kissing the underbellies of lullabying clouds drifting over the golden glow on the far horizon.
“And where would you dance?”
Eyebrows raise. A nanosecond of hesitation. A smile as wide as the sky. “We could dance on the rainbow and then we could slide down it and then we could dance on the roofs and in the park and then on the ocean.”
“And when would you dance?”
“We could dance in our dreams and in the night and maybe even at Christmas.”
“Do you feel like sleeping?”
“No, I feel like dancing.”
“Maybe you could dance with a penguin.”
I know the purists see neoteny as biological and not always something positive. Adults keep the physical traits of children longer than they were meant to. It’s about delayed development and all that stuff. But somewhere those of us who are fighting back the gray need to recapture the magic that slips so easily from our minds and hearts. There is wonder and awesomeness in all of God’s creation and growing up seems to blind our eyes and steal away the courageous risks we once had to dance with penguins and invisible elephants.
A little hand reaches up and brushes against my cheek. A finger pushes at the frame of my glasses. Playfully. “Did you ever dance with penguins?”
How do you leap back decades and decades and decades of not dancing with penguins? How do you hurdle the years of behavioral modification to be proper and still? How do you find the rhythm that moves your feet and increases your heartbeat? And how do you do all this and find the truth in your words to a three year old?
“Of course I danced with penguins. My favorite penguins were the blue ones. They could hum and dance at the same time.”
“Do we have blue penguins at the aquarium?”
“Of course not. Have you ever seen the penguins dancing in the aquarium? No. They have to be still to get their pictures taken. And blue penguins can’t stay still. They have to dance. So none of the zookeepers will catch them. They just let them dance and hum all day.”
“Some day I’d like to go and see the blue penguins dancing.”
“Maybe you could see them in your dreams. Look, the sun’s gone down. It’s too hard to see blue penguins at night. Maybe you can find them in dreamland.”
“Granpappa.”
“Yes, Muffin.”
“Do you think Noah took invisible elephants on the ark with him? How could he see them? And do you think they danced in those days? Maybe they were too scared from all the water.”
“Muffin, I think you are so smart. I think those elephants probably waited until God put the rainbow in the sky so they knew it was a good time to dance. Whenever things get hard look for God’s rainbow so you know when it’s a good time to dance.”
“Okay, granpappa. Night night. Maybe you can go and dance with Jesus while I sleep.”
Smiles or tears. That little princess has a way of rejuvenating my heart and making me long for another morning. I walk away.
As the last vestiges of evening dissipate I feel the arms of my lover wrap around me. “You seem chipper.”
“I feel like dancing.”
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Nicely done.
God bless~
God bless~
I love you for this delightful addition to my vocabulary!
Thank you for the delight . . .
Congratulations!
KJV Hebrews 10:26-31
Hugs in and through and because of Him,
Judi
I had tears in my eyes and stinging in my heart, but joy too! We stand to lose so much by being adults. It's so important to hold on to that childlike wonder!
Your grandchild is very blessed to have you!