The Children. A Pack.

The children come together in the afternoon. We move through the activities that make up our days, swimming, playdates, pre-school, playgroup, and the kids run together like a pack; one with wild ringlets under a child-sized police hat; one in two dresses and pink shoes, one clutching a dinosaur, one still in diapers, engrossed in his work building Duplo towers, quietly watching the big ones.

They’re tearing down the hallway, one dressed as a fairy, one as a fireman, one roaring like a tiger. Someone is the bad guy, someone is in jail. The baby grunts and jumps up and down in the arms that hold him. He wants to follow, but his legs don’t yet know how to crawl. He squawks, frustrated. A little one, blond with curls just beginning to bloom by his ears, brings a pacifier, and passes it to the baby. “Dat’s Bubbie Dadu’s dummy.” 

They’re back again, now busy with the play kitchen, stirring and chopping wooden vegetables. Someone snatches, someone is scolded. A downcast look, and then back to playing.

The light turns golden, and the shadows grow longer. I wonder, do the boys have dinner plans? There’s extra chicken, and I can boil some more pasta. Would they like to stay?

They would, and they do. Five children sit down around my table. It’s quiet for several beats. 

And those three beats of quiet, before the silly jokes start again, and the Please sit downs, the Watch outs, the Careful of your cup! Here, have some more, I think, I love this. What a life. 

I think about how these kids, they’re so lucky. They move together, separate and apart from the grownup world. They are accompanied by the ones who care for them, while mothers work, or travel, or prepare dinner, or battle the traffic and get to the grocery store. They’re lead by their imaginations, and mostly, they are left to negotiate the terms of their play. 

This pack of little ones and big ones, travelling together, looking out for each other, growing and learning together about how to get along, how be humans in this wide world. This is right and good and just as it should be, and one of the things I love the very most about living here in Indonesia.