Of Pink Tea and Pirouetting

My little guy came out of his sister's room and quite proudly declared, "We made pink tea!"  A look at his hot-pink stained fingers gave confirmation. And on the floor of his sister's room: a geode, once brilliant pink, now a rather sickly mottled color, somehow reminiscent of both sludge and licked-over peppermint. Their teacups lay strewn about the room, full of pink water, leached from the very unnatural but brilliant dyes from the stone. A stone gifted to them from a natural history museum.

Funny how some things can look so deceivingly beautiful but are just veneer.

My 11 month-old cannot yet walk, but she can crawl. She crawls the fastest when she sees me with the broom. One of the child's biggest pleasures in life right now is to follow me around while I'm sweeping in hopes of grabbing some delectable crumbs before they reach the dustpan. I have to be a sweeping ninja to get it past her attempts to grasp. It is almost a kind of dance--this reaching for refuse and pirouetting it out of reach.


This dance--it is a daily thing. We eat. We live. Crumbs fall. We clear and clear again. But still, they'll reach, innocently enough at first. They'll grow. They'll want to make pink tea, not understanding until too late that what they have ingested is not beautiful. They might bear marks, stains. They might even bear them proudly, not knowing. Or, knowing, they might hide them.

Ultimately, the cleansing cannot come from us. We may be the ones sweeping and cleaning and dancing it all out of reach, but haven't we also been the ones trying to grasp at what we shouldn't, at what looks like delight but can really sicken and weaken and stain? But there is also a grace. In the staining, in the weakening, in the grasping, there is opportunity for understanding and for empathy and much gratitude for growth

I can't say that I'm looking forward to seeing pink tea appear on the menu here again any time soon--unless there is a drastic recipe change. For now, I'm thinking a dash of sugar and milk will do just fine, in between dances, of course.