It had rained a while ago. Daivik and me were walking back home. As we turned a corner, I saw the pavement ahead leading to home. But Daivik saw something else, he saw joy. Simple, pure joy. The pavement was full of puddles of water of varying sizes. He stepped into one spontaneously and looked at me carefully for my reaction. I didn't say anything but waited for him to finish his thing. He jumped into the second, I waited. He jumped into the third, I waited. Fourth, fifth...twentieth. I waited, waited, it ended up being a long and silent walk home, but I wasn't thinking anything in particular. I did however remember this cute video and was smiling at myself.
Daivik is considerably older than the kid in the video. At some point he is going to stop jumping into the puddles. I was hoping to myself that this point does not arrive any time soon. At the end of the road, as we entered home he came up to me and said "Appa, you are my best friend". "You know why", he continued, "because, you let me jump in the water and waited for me".
We went for a little walk by a river two weeks back, on a sunny Satday afternoon after a overnight rain. The walk was full of puddles and Arka found a world in them. He picked up all the wild flowers blooming near the river and decided to drop them in each of the puddle. He picked a stick and he had to poke all the puddles with that stick. He had to jump, walk and make his shoe muddy. No doubt he had fun, but one mile walk took four hours and then few extra minutes of shoe cleaning by mom.
ReplyDeletethe joys of being the mom :)
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