Children embody hope
They are a family's, and community's, ray of light
“You’re my little sunshine, you are my ray of light. With you, the world is golden, the future looks so bright.” - From You’re My Little Sunshine by Nicola Edwards, a book given to my daughter by her great grammie
Prometheus, the Greek God of Forethought, the story goes, saved the human race by giving us fire and hope. Bright fire allows us to learn many crafts, and blind hope causes us to cease foreseeing death. Hope offers a reason for people to get out of bed in the morning. It ignites motivation, and allows one to envision a sunny future.
Children are enveloped in hope. Parents, when they gaze lovingly into the eyes of their children, imagine all that is possible for their little ones. They see their children as empty vessels yearning to be filled. They see in them endless potential.
When I taught first grade, I witnessed hope in the eyes of parents when they entered the door of our classroom on the first day of school. They took meticulous care to ensure their child looked their best, with spotless new shoes, freshly cut and styled hair, and a recently steamed and pressed uniform. They outfitted their child with all the supplies they thought necessary to be successful in their educational endeavors: newly sharpened pencils, vibrant crayons, and colorful folders to house homework and other important documents.
My students absorbed this hope and radiated it as they skipped into the classroom on their first day. They were eager to meet their classmates, elated to find their very own desk, and excited to show off and use their brand new supplies. Teaching first grade was unlike teaching fifth grade, my previous gig, because of this level of hope. Parents of first graders, by and large, are unflinchingly dedicated to their child's academic success. Everything is new—learning to read, writing their first sentence, arriving at correct answers to math problems—and, in the eyes of the parent, anything is possible. Their child could grow up to be a great writer, an engineer, an athlete, a musician, or maybe even a magician.
Parents provide boundless options—at least, what is within their reach and means—to their children and watch to see what they gravitate towards. They take note of those cues, and do their best to ensure their children can pursue what lights them up. They seek opportunities for their children that they did not have. Parents offer up an entrée of choices they feel they were deprived of, or didn't know to seek, in hopes of providing a better life, or one they themselves wished to have.
This hope is reignited with each subsequent generation. New life is breathed into grandparents when their grandkids are born. They too view their grandchildren as an opportunity for a brighter future, and as a chance to be the parent they wish they had been to their children. And great grandparents relish the gift of being alive to see the fourth generation born, resting assured that their legacy and the comfort of a familial safety net will carry on.
Loss of hope opens the door for despair; the presence of a child is a hedge against that despair. I now understand this, more so than I did as a teacher. Not only because my daughter gives me hope, but also because of how my family, and friends, react to her. She is the ray of sunshine in every room; my mother and father and siblings and aunts and uncles and grandparents can't help but glow with joy when she's around. They wake up smiling, knowing they get to see her. They plan outings with the aim of enriching her life. And they monitor their every word and move, knowing she is cataloging all that they say and do. Hope abounds just knowing that she exists. Hope abounds everywhere children inhabit.