A couple of years ago, my four year old son Sam and I were leaving a big box bookstore in upstate New York. It was winter, close to Thanksgiving. I held him in the crook of my arm, his face next to mine, his small arm confidently draped across my shoulder.
It was around 6PM. The sun had set. Lights on passing cars sparkled. The traffic sounds were perfectly clear in the crisp night air. The stage was set to see and to hear. As if the world had decided to create this giant stage and light it dramatically just for our benefit.
We heard the sound of geese calling, growing louder, very quickly. They were racing right at us. We turned and looked up at the floodlit front of the bookstore. A formation of Canadian geese burst from the darkness, a few feet above the white stone facade, their wings lit glorious white against the icy blackness of the sky. They trumpeted loudly as they swept directly overhead just twenty feet above us. It was a stunning moment. Those twenty or so geese created an impression of immense vitality and power. Their wings beating in unison, their calls so near and so loud, they flew past and upward into the darkened sky over the highway and were gone. Their calls sounding fainter as they disappeared into the blackness, swept by instinct and nature to where, I don’t know.
My son Sam and I looked at each other and laughed. We laughed at the sheer unrestrained power and beauty of the moment. Then I started talking; about how wonderful they were, about how lucky we were to have been in that exact spot when it happened, about how beautiful the world is in these moments.
Its a typical parenting thing. To take a good moment and reflect on it, to try and imprint it, keep it; to try and hold its power as a metaphor for life.
“This is what life is,” I said, “This is the magic! THIS!”
Sam needed no convincing that life is magical. Not at four years of age. He was all about the magic. It turns out the world was actually trying to convince me.
