My grand-nephew is a hoot. Named for my younger son, little Noah is funny, drop-dead cute, and tons of fun. A great companion for a Friday adventure. So today, when he arrived w/ his grandmother — my younger sister — in tow, I knew fun was walking in the door, too.

He made straight for the breakfast room. ‘I hungry,’ he announced. Out come cereal and a banana. ‘ I thirsty,’ he added, eye-balling his grandmother’s iced cappuccino. After learning how to make monster noises (who knew his education to date had lacked this essential wisdom??), he settled in to his usual questions:

‘Why you have cat?’ and ‘why doggie cry?’ and ‘where you food?’ Ad infinitum. After the cereal, we walked out to the garage to find his uncle, who was working on my car. Noah circled the car, waved to Glen, and started asking more questions. ‘Who car?’ ‘Why broken?’ More questions.

Questions were the MO of the morning, as we discussed toys, hats, sunglasses, dogs & cats, and the piece of trash next to him in the car. W/ a glittery pencil discarded by one of his sisters, and the empty Chex bag, he engineered…a creation. His blue eyes wide w/ wonder, he demanded that his grandmother and I ‘LOOK!’ So we did, watching as he twirled the bag on its stick holder.

Then he poked a second hole in the bag, running the pencil through either side. His twirling bag now looked more like a feedbag. So we made horse noises together.

When I’m with Noah I never have to  ‘try’ to have fun. Fun just happens, as it seems to for him. A pencil and a piece of discarded trash transform, through his eyes, into something magical, twirling on its glitter pencil axis. A coffee scoop and old coins? Treasure measured out into a bowl.

This is grace, folks — the ability to live so completely in the moment that the clear beauty in every particle catches fire. Find a kid, if you can’t do it on your own. Then practice. It won’t hurt, I promise. I’d lend you Noah, but he’s out for the count. All that beauty wears a guy out ~