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August 19, 2011

Propeller Miracles

Day 18 of my Summer Love Project. As usual, ideas and insights are coming faster than I can write about them, and as I was away in Florida for almost two weeks with intermittent Internet access, I have some catching up to do here! I am still working on being present, on being love – doesn’t happen all of the time, probably not even the majority of the time, but I do a little every day when I think of it, and I have noticed some subtle changes. Nothing dramatic or earth-shattering, just a little more inner peace every day, an inner glow and happiness more often than before, and a higher tolerance for noise and dysfunction that used to upset me horribly. I’ll take it.

Before I left for Florida, I went over to my brother’s house to do laundry. The dryer at my parents’ house was broken, and there wasn’t time to air dry everything before my trip. My brother and his wife came home with their two little boys before I finished, and the four-year-old, Lukas, wanted to stay and play with me rather than go to the gym with them. I was tired and had a lot to do at home, but I decided to stay and spend time with him. With his Lincoln Logs we built something that vaguely resembled a barn; he put in his toy cow and then went to get some ‘hay’ for him from behind the television, and I told him we needed to leave the cow so he could eat and take a nap.

Now what to do? I found my gaze drifting to the window, searching for my brother’s car. My nephew was rummaging in the toy box. “Aunt Maweeann, could you help me find my plane?” I took a deep breath and came back to the room, to Lukas. I laughed at the spastic way he pulled out the two largest toys and then gave up. I suggested that we remove all the toys, and we found the plane, only two inches long and yellow, at the bottom. “We found it!” He grabbed the plane and turned to me, jumping up and down and squealing with excitement. “Look, one of the pwopellers is bwoken. It still works though.” He spun the plastic propellers with his fingers to demonstrate. There were two on each wing. “It’s not as fast as the other planes because it doesn’t have the pwopeller on the nose.” He pointed to the nose of the plane to show me where the propeller should go for maximum speed.

I spun the propellers with my fingers and was suddenly aware of what a miracle he was. Only four years old, and he knew the word ‘propeller.’ He knew that it was more common to see a propeller on the nose of the plane, and he knew to call it a ‘nose.’ I was filled with amazement as I thought about how much he had learned in only four years. He had learned thousands of words, ideas, concepts. Such a little person, and he already had a pretty good understanding how things worked in the world. What unbelievable capabilities humans have!

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I started writing this yesterday but didn’t have time to finish it. I couldn’t remember whether Lukas’ toy airplane had two or four propellers, and I wasn’t sure whether they were on or under the wings. This morning he showed up at our house with his plane, the one he’d shown me that day a few weeks ago. I could look at it more closely and depict it accurately in this post. He’d never brought it here before.

Everything really is in time and on time. The universe always provides what is needed.

2 comments:

  1. yes sometimes we lose one of our propellers but we can still fly when the wind is at our backs!

    ReplyDelete