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I’ve got to admit that there’s nothing more charming than that one-top-tooth grin. Isaac’s top teeth came in at once, so there was none of this fleeting hillbilly-look to him. When he smiles, it looks like it’s coming all the way from his toes. Amazing. He’s so incredibly happy and so incredibly unsleepy.
I know it’s didactic and overused on graduation cards and such. But it’s a sentimental favorite for me. And a friend passed it along. I had forgotten several couplets. It’s nice to remember them.
IF
by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
I was intrigued when my card-carrying Reformed mama friend told me that when she looks at her daughters, she sees not a pagan, but a sister in Christ. Upon baptism, her babes are in the Covenant.
So what do we see when we see a child? I’ve got a book coming on Tuesday that answers this question from perspective of Augustine, Aquinas, Edwards, etc. So I’ll be back.
I read this recently from a wise friend:
Some happy homes have boisterous, energetic, passionate, imaginative, playful, noisy parents and children with lots of shouting up and down the staircase, thunderous romping and stomping, wrestles and tussles breaking out all over and children who never walk down the middle of a hallway but carom off the walls instead, etc.Â
So I want to say that some home-life ideals that we latch onto in our imaginations are a little anemic and tightly-wound by comparison to the richness of real life with children–at least in some families.Â