Out of the Mouths of Babes
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost
Kids know stuff–at least the ones I’m acquainted with seem to. I’m always taken aback when out of nowhere a preschooler accurately forecasts something about his future, or shrewdly analyses the threads of her current emotional upheaval. On occasion, even the windows of Heaven are unlocked at their need.
When I was a young married, we lived in Cedar City in a worn pioneer polygamist home across the street from the Rock Church. (The house was so old, it is now a museum.) Next door was the local mortician. He was a young guy with a couple of kids. One morning he called me to tell my three-year-old had escaped the confines of our yard and was now in his custody.
It seems our friend was working at his desk that fine spring morning, and the window next to him was wide open letting in the fresh breeze. Something which sounded like giggling caught his attention. First, he yelled over his shoulder at his kids to be quiet so he could finish a report, but the giggling continued. He leaned out the window and searched the yard; no sign of the perpetrator. Then the singing began. Primary songs. All the words, but none of the tunes. The scratchy off-key phrases finally got so irritating, he gave up his efforts and walked out the back door.
Squinting in the sun, he followed the source of the noise to high in a nearby tree. “Who’s up there,” he demanded, seeing only a dark shadow high above him.
“It’s me. It’s me. Markie Voorhies, a unique individual!” That designation has followed Son #1 his whole life. And he’ s still enthusiastic, but he still can’t sing. When he was Bishop of a ward in Toronto, Canada, the First Counselor got up half-way through the opening hymn and stopped the chorister.
“Sister ___ (?), the Bishop can’t carry a tune, and this song is killing me. Would you pick another one?” So, she did.
Then there’s our four-year-old granddaughter who is living with us. She regularly terrorizes her eight-year-old twin sisters. A couple of weeks ago, I heard sobbing coming from the living room. One of the twins was sitting on the couch with tears dripping down her face.
“What’s the matter, Lily?” I asked her gently.
The four-year-old, Emery, didn’t give her sister a chance to explain. “She has on a pink skirt,” she exclaimed with some exasperation. “She has to take it off.”
“And that’s because?” I made the mistake of asking.
“I OWN PINK!” was her adamant reply. “She can’t wear it!” Apparently, she was right because the eight-year-old stopped crying, sighed, and went downstairs to change.
As a result, it was not any surprise that the twins cheered when they found out Daughter #1 and I were taking their little sister on an out-of-town trip with us.
“Oh, good.” The other twin concluded. “Now we can make our own decisions!” For a while.
But some of most important words I ever heard from a child were not spoken at all. Before the new hospital rose above the University of Utah, Primary Children’s Hospital was located in the avenues near where LDS Hospital now stands. As a child, I always thought of it as my hospital because no matter where we lived, the local Primary collected pennies from the children in their congregations to help sick children in Salt Lake City—one penny for every inch of growth. Never did I imagine that I might one day know one of those children personally.
In my early 30’s, a beloved cousin had a beautiful baby girl born with several serious heart defects. The baby’s future was bleak. Because my cousin lived in Payson and already had a small child or two, it was difficult for her to spend all day every day with the baby at the hospital, so she asked me if I could go in her place a couple of times.
I don’t remember the NICU rules in those day so long ago, but I can clearly see myself sitting quietly on a bench outside the unit. In addition to the windows for adult visitors, some compassionate architect had provided several small circular windows about three feet off the ground—like portholes on a ship—so that young brothers and sisters could see into the nursery where their siblings were being cared for.
On my last visit, a nurse gestured to me to find out which baby I was there to see. I pointed to crib where my cousin’s daughter lay connected to monitors and tubes, even an IV in her head pumping tiny drops of liquid into her fragile body. She was less than six weeks old. The nurse moved the crib to one of the portholes near me. From my seated position, the baby and I were eye to eye.
There was nothing I could do. I simply sat for a long time next to the window watching the child breathe in and out. Then, unexpectedly, she opened her eyes and turned her head to stare directly at me. There were no words, but through some unimaginable connection, she spoke. And I understood. “Tell my mother it’s all right. I chose.” I felt the words repeated several times in my heart. Exhausted, she closed her eyes and went back to the heavy work of breathing.
I did tell her mother–at the baby’s funeral a few weeks later. We wept together. But for both of us, there was comfort and consolation in recognizing that as it promises in Psalms, “out of the mouth of babes” comes not only understanding, but “strength”.