by Patrick Caneday

Created on: November 24, 2008

"Daddy, today I am going to try buttons," my 6 year old announced to me some months ago. She then proceeded to take the rest of the day to do just that and discover that she can indeed button her own pants, shirts and sweaters.

Having children is both the greatest gift and greatest punishment we receive in life. It is the greatest gift because of all the discoveries that are made by and about our children and ourselves. Sadly, it is the greatest punishment for the very same reason.

The rewards of parenthood come in those all too brief moments between the chaos and disasters when we do ourselves the favor of seeing life through their eyes. And when we do this, over time we see that their worlds expand outward concentrically as they grow. Life to the child is a never ending series of discoveries. Life to the adult is simply the discovery of the never ending.

A newborn's world is but 6 inches in front of its face and no more. They grasp at strange sounds and blurry objects for the sole purpose of putting things in their mouths. Cheerios, pacifiers, beetles and breasts. A crawler's world extends out a few feet from the place they have been positioned; anything within this radius is fair play for slobber and destruction. Walkers explore the room and the world a bit more extensively, but only as far as the invisible apron string from mommy and daddy allows.

Until recently, to my two girls the world extended north 3 houses up the street but not beyond The Big Tree, and south one house but no farther than the invisible line drawn by the neighbor's hedge. That Big Tree was a gargantuan old Eucalyptus that was recently cut down by our city. Seriously, this thing was enormous. I hear that The Big Tree once served as a landmark for pilots in the air attempting to land at our local airfield. In the age of GPS and Yahoo Maps something about a physical marker seen from thousands of feet in the air makes me feel nostalgic, grounded and safe. I am a little lost without The Big Tree. I don't blame the city for cutting down The Big Tree though. In the last year two branches, each alone bigger than most trees in the city, have come falling down into the street. Each time it felt as if a tremor had struck the neighborhood, and traffic through our street was cut off (which I can't say I was too upset about). But I am sad to see The Big Tree gone, for my kids' world now extends to The Big Hole and I hope not too far beyond.

Curiosity is what drives them to stretch out their boundaries

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