A SMALL BOY'S HAPPINESS

excerpt from A CHEROKEE FEAST OF DAYS, Daily Meditations, by Joyce Sequichie Hifler

Dedicated to Nancy and Jesse

Take away the plastic, the film, the artificial and give a small boy a stick to dig in the dirt, to whack the water at the pond's edge - and you have given him happiness.  Show him deer tracks and the handprints of a raccoon, and you give him curiousity.  Boost him up to the lowest limb of a tree and he can take the next one with vision.  Show a small boy something other than cartoons, sing him songs that are not commercials, teach him gentleness with small animals and other children, and you have given him a life laced with love and kindness.  The best part of sharing an hour with an exhuberant little boy is that he gives back so much, shining eyes, imagination, questions without end, and laughter at nothing and everything.  It is an hour well spent and will be remembered.  Hopefully, in later years, he will recall that it was spent with Grandma.