Proportion
Growing up as the oldest of six siblings I matured quickly. I haven’t always liked being the eldest but I’ve always been exceedingly comfortable with it: I nurture, I mentor, I firmly defend, I quietly lead. But recently I’ve been feeling less like a leader and more like an observer when I spend time with my little sister, Aria.
Aria is my 8-year-old sister, born with a cleft lip and palate that has made her tough as nails and astounding as ever now. She’s the kind of kid that’s ecstatic and hyper the second I enter the room and also fain to soften into my lap to have her hair braided. As she’s gotten older I’ve seen her grow curious about how things are made, tinkering with glue (gluing the pages of a notebook together), or shoving a rubber ball into a cylinder-shaped package, but one of her favorite materials is a fitted bedsheet. She knows its proportions and can tug all four corners to scale around a variety of objects— as long as there’s enough room for her to crawl under it. I witnessed one of these carefully crafted fortresses being built the other day, and marveled at her adroit assembly of household furniture. Her quick tiny body dragged bar stools into the living room, sidled the arms of the couch on her toes, and wove pillows like layered bricks to create an entrance/exit. She cut the ribbon with a sweet smile and lifted the sheet that measured just above the crown of my head to usher me inside. As any good host, drinks and snacks were included.
I’ve noticed that kids take in information through their hands, learning their environment through touch— like when you warn a kid not to hover above a hot stove, they don’t really understand why until they test it themselves and get burned. Or, like Aria, they build a “home” out of unconventional items, mimicking the affordances of a door with a pillow and a taped mason jar lid. And in this tactile education there is empathy: the ability to learn a material through an 8-year-old’s lens, which I think offers a nuanced and more intimate connection to the objects around us. Reigniting this sense of innocence and wonder that most shed after eighteen. The innocence and wonder we all sometimes still need.