The sidewalk leading to the courthouse is often crowded with people rushing to and from the courtrooms: attorneys and criminal defendants, divorcing parents trying to get custody or avoid child support, advocates and crime victims, people suing each other for all kinds of things and money, jurors and retiring judges.
Into that cross section of people pour those with business in the County Administration Building: developers visiting the planning offices, citizens paying property taxes or getting car licenses, job seekers going to the human resources department.
Not everybody knows where they are going. Many stop to look at maps or to ask someone who looks like they know the area. Then they rush off. The campus is a crowded microcosm of daily Americana in Snohomish County.
Campus construction funnels most people going to and from the two biggest buildings onto one narrow sidewalk. The sidewalk runs north and south from Pacific Avenue to Wall Street; it intersects and joins two ends of Rockefeller Avenue.
One chilly, damp March morning I stepped out of the courthouse and into that stream of consciousness and headed north.
When I passed the northwest corner of the courthouse, and turned west, a wind blowing off of Port Gardner Bay hit me. I pulled my coat around me, hunched my shoulders and started walking west toward Colby Avenue.
At exactly that moment, a 5-year-old boy skipped by me, going the same direction around the courthouse corner. Literally skipped by.
He had on shorts and a T-shirt and his baseball hat backward. He and his mother were holding hands, and, come to think of it, she might have been skipping to. They were deeply in love.
I felt the wind and thought to myself, "Whew, this is pretty chilly."
He felt the wind and exclaimed to his mother, "What a great day to fly kites."
She laughed, and when I lost sight of them I think they were going kite flying.
On a much warmer day during spring vacation week I watched another 5-year-old stand stone still in the butterfly house at the Seattle Science Center. His eyes were almost closed. He rested one hand on the waist-high concrete wall and held his other thumb in his mouth.
I mentioned to his mother that it was hard to tell if he was almost falling asleep or watching real close. She answered that he was standing still in hopes that a butterfly would land on him.
A few minutes later and a little further along, I watched him excitedly compare a butterfly sitting in front of him with an illustration on the guide chart he held in his left hand. He pointed out to his mother what kind of butterfly it was.
I asked her if he was always this interested in things. She told me that he simply loves butterflies. Loves them. The butterfly house is his favorite place in the world.
"Whenever he hears that we are going to the butterfly house," she said, "he practices standing still. One time when we came here, a butterfly landed on him and he thought it was the luckiest day of his whole life."
My brief contacts with the two young strangers reminded me of some truths.
True: "Children are our future," which should encourage us to give them a good education and prevent child abuse. We need to be sure that all children have competent adults, productive activities and safe places to be.
But saying that misses a point. Children are a part of our present.
Children who don’t have chances to fly kites and see butterflies are simply not having enough childhood. Perhaps they don’t have the chances to play safely in the presence of adults who adore them.
If we adults don’t see children who are excited about flying kites or mesmerized by butterflies, we aren’t around enough children.
For our part, we may be busy running to and from important meetings, much like the March Hare in "Alice in Wonderland:" "I’m late, I’m late, I’m late; for a very important date. No time to say hello, goodbye, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late."
Children are not just our future. They are contributing members of our present. They are here and all around, right now, and by just being what and who they are, they point the ways to joy and wonder.
Bill France, a father of three, is a child advocate in the criminal justice system and has worked as director of clinical programs at Luther Child Center in Everett. He is on the Snohomish County Child Death Review Committee, and the Advisory Board for the Tulalip Children’s Advocacy Center. You can send e-mail to bsjf@gte.net.
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