Unbridled Joy

If there was one thing I could wish for everybody on earth, it would be to experience unbridled joy, at least for a day, most certainly weekly, and for the truly fortunate daily. I have two grandsons, Charley who is 8 and Sage who is 5. These boys bring me more Unbridled Joy than I ever imagined. Their own joyous nature shines off them so brilliantly that it can't fail to whack whoever's around and make them feel the joy the children are feeling. Let me give you an example:

I took the boys out to the sand point for a walk on Thursday. It's where the bay waters open into the Pacific and run freely. There's an open sandy beach with small dunes and fifty yards from the water's edge are bigger sand dunes studded with prickly stinging European Beach Grass. The boys met up with three neighbor kids, each a bit older than Charley, but Charley begged to run and play with them. I was fairly certain the smaller five year old Sage would have a hard time 'keeping up' with the Big Kids, but Charley wanted to play so I agreed. I stayed a discreet distance behind to keep an eye on my youngsters.

When my own children were small, my friend coined a phrase of "Earwig" to describe the youngest child in a group of kids playing. The Earwig was usually the one who lagged behind and had to hurry to catch up; the one the other kids would immediately label "It" in a game of tag. The Earwig would never actually catch up to the bigger kids. The only time that happened would be when a younger child joined the group and then that younger one would be "It".

Well, it was immediately apparent after a few minutes play that Sage was now the Earwig of the moment. He's cute. That's what everybody describes him and what he describes himself as: cute. He's tiny and not very tall, forty two inches and has a sleek cap of blonde hair cut Surfer-style that usually hangs in his pretty green eyes, the same color as his mommy's. He's an adorable, cute little button of a boy. And today, he was the Earwig.

The object of the game was for the four older children to run to one dune and hunker down in the tall dune grass and hide, while Sage was to look for them. When and if he found them, he was supposed to tag one of them and they would be "it". Well, that was the object of the game, but evidently they hadn't fully presented all the criteria to Sage. I watched while they sailed down one dune and sought refuge on the backside of another dune. I looked in vain at a high dune top that I had last seen Sage's head disappear in. Nothing. The big kids peeked up from behind their dune trying to catch sight of their nemesis. So did I. Where was that little boy? Swallowed up in a sand dune and lost?

Immediately, his little blonde head bobbed above the dune grass and he peered out, spotting me first. His face split in a wide grin. The older kids catching sight of him let out a collective whoop of horror and charged off for a an even farther away dune than Sage was on. Sage kept the same delighted grin on this face, sent his little thumb skyward in a jubilant gesture to his grandma and plunged down the steep dune, determined to seek his quarry.

That's what I call Unbridled Joy. He didn't stamp his feet and cry out, "Unfair! You're older and faster than me. I'll never catch you!" He just was consumed with the job of making the Big Kids run and scream and leaped at the chance to participate. My grandson: Unbridled Joy