Better Things To Do

"If we loved children, we would have a few. If we had them, we would want them as children, and would love the wonder with which they behold the world, and would hope that some of it might open our own eyes a little. We would love their games, and would want to play them once in a while, stirring in ourselves those memories of play that no one regrets, and that are almost the only things an old man can look back on with complete satisfaction. We would want our children tagging along after us, or if not, then only because we would understand that they had better things to do."

Anthony Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, xii.





I just encountered the quote above while trying to create this year's NYS IHIPs.  It's rare that I cry, but today, still touched by the sadness of recent events and overwhelmed by all I Must Do, as well as those innumerable things I think I must do, feeling flubbish and utterly inadequate to the tasks at hand, unready for the new school year looming on the near horizon, and, above all, unworthy of the beautiful weight of rearing these little souls, I had a brief cry in the bathroom.  

Thank you, Mister Esolen, for giving a sane word in a sea of frenetic voices. 




(I guess at least one of the girls is eager for formal hlearning to begin...)