Through the eyes of a child

My blog friend Cami is doing a walk Saturday to help raise money for breast cancer. I hope you'll click over and help her out if you can. Not only is it for a most important cause, but she's also a Bama fan.


I think you like the outdoors. Whenever we walk outside, you get completely quiet. It's as if you are overwhelmed by all the sights and sounds and are just taking it all in. I try and look at the world through your eyes. I see the greens of the trees and the blues of the sky and wonder what it must be like seeing them for the first time.

I shield your eyes from the sun, and I think how someone must have done the same for me. You cling to my sleeve with your tiny hand and I cannot imagine a more precious sight.

Turning your head, you find me. And I smile until my face literally hurts, because lately my only goal in life seems to be bringing a smile to yours. There is a hint of one. It is gone as quickly as it came. But it makes me think you are happy. And so I am happy.

Through your eyes, I see the world anew. Vivid colors and the sweet sounds of life replace the grays and noise of my previously jaded view. I see a world that still has a lot of good in it. I see a future with endless possibilities for you, stretched out as far and wide as the East is from the West.

I think about my life. About unfulfilled potential and dreams not chased. Somehow, looking thru your eyes, I realize many of those same possibilities still exist for me, even now. I want to be a better person for you, an uncle you can look up to. And I want you to have so much more than I ever did.

You have reminded me that life is a wondrous and magical thing. That there are few things more important than eating and sleeping. And that people are generally most content and carefree when they are completely naked.

A sudden stiff breeze causes your head to jump, your eyes to close, and for the briefest instant it steals your breath. And I wonder when I lost that ability.

As we start back inside, you turn your head for one more look at the great wide world. Still completely quiet. Still clinging to my sleeve. But it is I who is wrapped securely around your finger.

"I hear babies cry. I watch them grow. They'll learn much more than I'll never know. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world..."