Category: Children

I listened to a TED talk by Ken Robinson this evening who quoted a poem by W.B. Yeats, He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven.

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Robinson referred his listeners to children who relate to adults by spreading their dreams beneath our feet. It seemed to me a fitting consideration for all of our significant relationships. The more significant, the more dreams are exposed to tread. And so I’m sharing it with you. One furthering of the idea, perhaps… Is it central to the ideal of hospitality to tread lightly on others dreams? I have spread my dreams under your feet.

Addendum. A couple of weeks ago, a group of us from church ate at our favorite hamburger joint after a softball game. Four of us sat with my granddaughter Kylie, who is three years old and, in her words, almost grown up now. Her father likes to put a packet of pepper into his ketchup and dip his fries. Kylie the almost-grown-up-3-year-old likes this flavor and likes to imitate this very grown up habit (along with eating Thai Chili-Lime Cashews from Trader Joe’s, but that’s another story). So, mingling with us other grownups she casually picked up a packet and emptied it into her ketchup. Unfortunately, it was salt instead of pepper. The four of us “grownups” at the table all instinctively reached out and spoke up to try to stop her mistake – that’s not pepper! – startling her from her nearly grown-up reverie. We were too late. Someone picked up the ketchup and attempted to shake the salt from the top. Kylie shrank back. After a time, she started crying uncontrollably. We all felt bad. No had spoken in anger. It was just that we stepped all over her dream of being grown up, and she was terribly embarrassed. The petals of the blossoming rose retracted a bit. Could we have that little episode back to do over?