Children walk at the speed of curiosity. Mine stops for everything. A leaf with a hole in it. A crack in the pavement shaped like a letter. A dog three houses away that needs, apparently, to be discussed.
For a long time this drove me a little mad. We had places to be. We always have places to be.
The adult speed
I move through the day the way most adults do, looking for the end of each thing so I can start the next. Emails, errands, dinner, bedtime. Even the good parts become tasks to finish.
A five-year-old doesn't know how to do that yet. She hasn't learned that the walk is only the space between two places. For her, the walk is the place.
We spend years teaching children to hurry. Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to unlearn it.
What I'm learning from her
Not everything has to be on the way to something else. A Sunday doesn't need a plan to be a good one. The leaf with a hole in it is, in fact, interesting, if you stop long enough to look.
I don't always manage it. Most days I still hurry her along. But some Sundays I let her set the pace, and we get almost nowhere, and it's the best part of the week.
For your Sunday
Let one thing today take as long as it takes. A walk, a meal, a story, a bath. Don't fill the time after it. Just let it be slow, and see who you are when nobody is rushing.
The Night I Realized We Were All Home, but Not Really Together
What does your child stop for that you'd walk straight past? Tell me below. I'm collecting them.
I read, I choose, and I write about the books that stay with me. I also write The Keeper Chronicles.
Small ways back to each other, once a week.
Once a week: a short personal note, one article about reading or family life, one practical idea to try, and a question you can answer just by replying. One email a week, never a sales pitch.
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