A Four-Year-Old and God
By Claire Heffron
I am lying in bed with my 4-year-old son, a place where it seems almost all of our most important interactions take place lately, when he turns to me and asks, “Why wasn’t I born when Ali was alive?” Ali is my little sister who passed away twelve years ago. She was 17 and I was 20. I sigh, feeling a familiar sadness seep into my eyes, and answer him, “Because when Ali was alive, mommy didn’t have any kids yet. I was still pretty young.” I expect him, as he usually does, to try to set the scene for himself, carefully placing all the characters in it by asking questions about how old everyone was at the time, whether any of his cousins were born yet, and where we were all living. But, as only a preschooler can do, he changes the tides. “I know mom. I wasn’t ready yet. God was still making me.” I look at this little old soul with his concerned-looking eyes and wispy brown curls and I wonder how this can possibly be the same creature who just hours before had become so overwhelmed with rage that he bit his little brother on the shoulder (broken skin and all) while they were taking a bath.
This is life with a four-year-old. Days spent swimming between the shores of attuned introspection and what can only be described as stark raving madness. A preschooler can be swept up into a tantrum without notice, taking down everyone and everything in his path. And then the storm will pass as quickly as it came. Kids this age seem so agitated, like they’re about to blow at even the slightest provocation. Until that final half hour of the day, when they cuddle up against moms, dads, and stuffed animals –desperate for an excuse to stay up just a few more minutes. Moms and dads desperate to reconnect after a day of whining, crying, yelling, punishing, and reconciling.
And often in those last minutes before it’s time for them to go to sleep, they seem to come back to themselves. They turn, like magic, back into these lovely, soft, gentle, spiritual little souls. And it’s in these moments that I’m pretty sure they’re connecting to wherever it was before they came to this world. I think it’s God, or heaven, or some otherworldly place – because you can see it in their eyes and I hear it in their voices. And they talk about things like where they were before they were born. My son tells me about “baby college” – a beautiful place where, he says, everyone wore shiny necklaces. He tells me that the sound of the rain reminds him of my sister – who has been gone for 12 years and whom he never met.
By this time of day, I think toddlers are tired. Tired of learning and growing and developing, and above all, tired of assimilating into the miniature grown-ups the world expects them to be. I think they’re so tired that they let their guard down and they forget about all the messages they see and feel and hear all day long telling them to “act like a big boy”, to “be quiet”, or that most everyone is “too busy” to play right now. When I look into my son’s tired, sparkling eyes, it’s clear to me that this little one knows something that most of us don’t. That he knows far more about the way the universe works than any of us grownups do.
Thinking of these beautiful little spirits being bombarded all day long by a world that’s telling him to forget about that enlightened part of themselves, it explains a lot to me. It explains the tantrum-throwing toddler at the park and the whining preschooler who is jammed into a cart at the grocery store and the angst-filled fighting between two young siblings. It’s like a battle raging inside of them. On one side, a pure spirit that sees the world in terms of spirit, energy, and connection. On the other, a human self who see the world in terms of things, and wants, and needs.
As babies, maybe we all have a deep and clear understanding of things. Of the universe, of the circle of life, of God. As we grow older and our life story unfolds, maybe our memory of where we came from and why we came here in the first place grows foggy with the stories and preoccupations of human life.
At age four, it seems like my little guy still has some connection to that enlightened place. And at night, when I can finally take stock of a day’s worth of fighting and misbehavior, I wonder if he’s not really fighting with me after all. I wonder if maybe he’s fighting against a world that is asking him to give up and forget about the most important part of himself. I wonder if he’s confused by the fact that he can still remember and connect with that kind of spirituality, when almost no one else around him can. I wonder if he’s frustrated that he doesn’t have the words to describe the things he understands, because those words don’t exist.
Is my little boy more special than any other? No. I think what I’m describing here is not unique to him. He’s loving and bratty and funny and rough, just like any other little boy. And maybe his tantrums are really just about that piece of chocolate and he wants right now or that show he’s not allowed to watch. But I think there’s much more to the story.
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