Unadulteration

Adulterate. To corrupt, debase, or make impure by adding foreign substances. Interesting because the suffix -ate means "to become or make into."

Adulterate. To become an adult. To corrupt something innocent. To make something that is pure impure by adding . . . what? Life lessons? Experience? Age? All of the above?

So as we grow from child to adult, we become corrupted. Our innocence is lost. Our naivete. Our purity. Our opinions change. Our outlook changes. Some call it "growing up." Most try to cage it as a positive thing. Can you imagine an adult with a child's trust, a child's wonder, a child's innocence? They wouldn't last one day in today's world.

I thought it was a positive change. I thought about how gullible I was as a child. How ruled by wild emotions and whims. How undisciplined. I thought with pride about how much I've grown as I've aged, how far I've come, how much more I know now than I did then, how much calmer and more controlled I am.

Then I had a child. I looked forward to giving her a childhood like mine, a childhood filled with wonder and magic and cackles of laughter that mix with sprinkler drops in the hot summer sun. A childhood filled with innocence. I would give her innocence and she would give me experience. She would help me grow up even more, to learn the lessons that still needed learning, to gain the strength and discipline and fortitude and determination that I still needed to gain. And she has. Through my daughter, I have learned to stand my ground, to become an advocate. She has given me strength. And confidence. She has helped me become more and more the adult I want to be.

But she has also given me something else. Something unexpected.

When I watch her interact with her world, when I see the wonder in her eyes, the unmitigated delight, I find myself swept along in her vision. Suddenly a ball rolling across the floor becomes a miracle. A cat's tail twitching just out of her grasp again and again becomes the funniest joke ever told. Rolling back and forth on a bed together, seeing a duck flap its wings, feeling a strong gust of wind in my face, exploring the movement of arms and legs and fingers . . . they all become moments of wonder and fascination and joy. I see a hippo at the zoo through a child's eyes, not my adult eyes that have seen hippos before, my adult eyes that are no longer impressed with the rough skin and huge haunches and funny face.

Having a child has given me back a sense of innocence. Of discovery. Of wonder with the every day.

Because there is no "every day" with a child. Every moment, every object, is new and delightful.

She has given me back a taste of my unadulterated perspective. Of how I saw the world before I grew up.

And though the growth I have experienced as a person, as a woman, as a mother, as an adult since her birth has been incredible . . . it's the antithesis of that, the reversion to the innocence and wonder of childhood, the unadulteration of my mind, that has been the true gift.

What a miracle this is. What a joy.