At 5, the world is full of possibilities

“I’m not a LITTLE girl. I’m five!” my granddaughter Emma exclaimed when I wished her happy birthday.
I don’t remember ever having such exuberance. But then I haven’t been five for a very long time.
I enjoy talking to her. The whole world is hers for the taking. Anything and everything is possible. There are no shades of grey; only black and white. Everybody loves her and if they don’t she will do everything in her power to change that. If she can’t make someone love her then she accepts that and goes on about her business.
I wish I were more like that. For me there is no such thing as black and white. Everything is shades of grey. There are no absolutes in my world. I can see both sides of almost everything. That doesn’t make me any more tolerant than the next person, just better able to understand how someone can hold an opposing opinion.
In Emma’s world optimism is a given. I have to work at the Pollyanna viewpoint. It is far too easy for me to believe that the end of the world is near; that things will never get better; that I am wrong to believe that all people are basically good. In my world whatever dark cloud is hovering at the moment is here to stay.
In a five-year-old’s world disaster can strike at any moment causing a major meltdown. After the tears have stopped, happiness is as close as a hug, a cuddly pet or a little brother who growls like a dinosaur.
For me, when disaster strikes and a meltdown occurs, it is followed by days of brooding, sulking and mass quantities of chocolate. The only pet we have doesn’t like to cuddle and neither of my little brothers has growled like a dinosaur in decades.
The innocence of a girl who is now five is something special. When I told her it was snowing she wanted to know why I wasn’t outside playing in it. I told her it was too cold. She told me to put on a sweater. It was as simple as that. Got a problem? Solve it and go play.
How I wished the world worked that way. I do play, just not in the snow. I play when I cook. I play when I garden. I play when I do artsy-craftsy stuff. The trouble is that few problems are able to be solved by simply putting on a sweater.
Having said that, a part of me is sad that Emma is no longer a little girl. She is becoming a big girl. She has her own likes, dislikes and opinions and doesn’t hesitate to share them.
As a big girl she has a life apart from her family. She has friends at gymnastics and at school. She has different friends and different rules at her mom’s house and at her dad’s. She accepts the differences as normal.
She’s five. She can handle anything. Just don’t refer to her as a little girl. She’s a big girl now.[[In-content Ad]]