“Kip’s eating something,” my daughter yelled, pointing at her just turned one-year old. “I think it’s a dead frog.”

Swooping down from above, I pulled my grandson onto my lap and with a swish of my right pointer finger, I swiped his mouth and out popped a desiccated, mummified tree frog. Only later would I realize how practiced my actions had been—bend, reach, pull, swipe, empty oral cavity.

“Well?” my daughter wanted to know.

“Yep,” I said, “Dead frog.” I flipped the dead frog onto the coffee table in front of me.

“Ba-scussting,” observed the frog eater’s sister.

“No! Disgusting is the fact that the frog was almost re-animated into a zombie frog because of your brother’s magic baby spit.”

She stared at the now slimy dead frog looking for signs of zombie life. The one-year old howled for more dead frog.

Except ye . . . become as a little child.

My youngest son, Adam, waxed eloquent on the subject of Ayn Rand’s theories of the importance of individualism in opposition to the abstraction of the collective mentality by saying, “You know of course what Ayn Rand said about individualism in opposition to the abstraction of the collective mentality . . .”

My son had just raised his hand to punctuate a particularly salient point, when his four-year old stepdaughter turned away from her lunch plate to spit a chewed up noodle in a gooey wad at his feet.

He lost his train of thought. I lost my train of thought.

Then, with eyebrows raised and totally mystified, he asked the two questions we all want to ask everyone, “Why did you do that? Why would anyone want to do that?”


Suffer little children . . . and forbid them not.

“Grab that kid. He’s got no pants on,” someone shouted as a random two-year old streaked through the kitchen. Various people yelled. A few parental-types took off in hot pursuit.

Someone yelled, “Why won’t that kid keep his pants on?”

“Somebody find his pants,” someone else shouted. Pants hunters were dispatched.

The pants-less wonder jumped onto the couch and began a pants-less dance. Several people pointed and laughed—mostly kids and one grandfather. Eventually, the nudist was soon wrestled to the ground and re-pants.

Rumor has it that, of our two-year old grandson, a tiny girl from our church told her mother. “That’s Conner-Boy. He’s so funny. He takes his pants off in the nursery.”

. . . for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

My observations of the young and restless leads me to believe that heaven will be a very exciting place—full of fun and unexpected surprises. Then I watch Kip and Sadie learning to walk, and realize that no matter how many times they fall down—they ALWAYS get up--ALWAYS, and how full of hugs and kisses my grand daughters (Emma and Zoe) are, and how clearly Conner sees the world—mean people are bad and nice people are good. He sees no silly gray ambiguities the way we adults need to. My grandchildren teach me about tenacity, and kindness, and clarity—and heaven,

and I do believe.

Linda (Cup Runneth Over) Zern