Childhood Innocence and Ovid’s Myth

I found this picture over the weekend.  It was from when I was innocent enough to believe that black people were black because they had been struck by lightning.  You will have to read the book to get the rest of that story, or at least this old post.  There is such a purity in not knowing.  I don’t have but a couple of pictures of me as a child because foster care wasn’t conducive to keeping up with those and most of my siblings and cousins got what few my grandparents had in their possession.

This one is from 1966.  It was before the first real tragedy in my life, when innocence was the essence in the eyes that had cried few real tears.

I was babysitting this weekend and it occurred to me that children are so very innocent.  They only know what they learn as they grow, and each is influenced by their own little world that expands as they mature.  Though not a perfect love, I am reminded of Ovid’s Myth…parental artists, we are, that we could mold them and shape them into perfection, but that doesn’t happen, and it shouldn’t.…reality is that they are formed by their own uniqueness and their own experiences.  They are a gift to us that we give back to the world one day.

There are so many avenues for advice these days with access to the internet, other media, and all of the Mommy Blogs.  All we can truly do is to try to teach them sound values and morals, give them something to believe in, and trust that they will find their way.