The weekend party with the grandchildren was great. I am not known for my empathy or emotional responses but you know, what was good was to see how they all got on together and how they worked things out, got frustrated, upset and quickly it was forgotten. Working things out was interesting as they had to free a load of plastic bugs from a block of ice. Progressively things were experimented with until dropping it on the patio was tried. Then dad had to get his club hammer out and assist them with smashing the ice up.
It took me back to other moments where I did actually get to feel my emotions - being an INTJ that is pretty difficult as it's all logic and so on with me. We went to Disneyland (we actually went three times eventually) but the first time was the one for me. The children were young and of course they were smallish too. I remember stopping and realising that everything that they saw and experienced was new and most probably magical to them. It felt magical to me as their reactions and obvious joy was what it was all about and I was just there to enable it to happen along with the Disney people of course.
A similar thing happened when I "rewarded" the children with a trip to Lapland, it was all planned with a letter dropping down the chimney and tickets and all sorts of things. It was a wonderful experience with all sorts going on, Reindeer, Husky Rides, snow, magical candlelit trails into the woods and so on. It was moving when they met the big man and it was great that they had a few lovely presents to bring home with them.
We have our grandson with us at the moment and finally I realise how precious these times are. He is quite young but my goodness can he read and write. He's not bad at maths either and when we went to a restaurant the other day, apart from a couple of words he read it all. The thing is of course to encourage and just rejoice in his achievements. I said he'd counted up to 100 this morning whereupon he corrected me - 110 he said. Someone said don't you mind getting up early to look after him? Well of course not because soon he won't be here and he won't want to come that often, he'll be with his friends and so its best to enjoy it all and see it through his eyes.
Everything is new and bright and interesting, that's good to ground us adults and remind us, despite all the rubbish things that exists in our world, there are amazing things to be seen and to do. A new bird feeder today being a prime example and suddenly lots of birds were flcoking to the garden and we could try to identify them.
I have to stop myself being Mr. Pedant and Mr. INTJ and having these little people around certainly does that for me.