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Love - Children Will Listen


Careful the things you say
Children will listen
Careful the things you do
Children will see and learn
Children may not obey, but children will listen
Children will look to you for which way to turn
To learn what to be
Careful before you say "Listen to me"
Children will listen
Lyrics from "Children Will Listen" by Stephen Sondheim's "Into the Woods"

 I have an uncle who I always refer to as my favorite uncle. He and his wife both were my favorites and I have no idea why. I have a lot of relatives, why did they get the top spot? I remember them both for their warm and how they asked me about myself and payed attention to me, but I only remember one sound byte from my uncle, Lloyd Barron.

 We were walking together across the parking lot of St. Regis School. We had just got out of a  church function. I can't remember if it was a confirmation, graduation or a funeral. We were walking toward the Fr. Shield room at the school for a reception. I was freezing cold. I was probably shivering and whining a bit when he said, "If you think you are warm, you will be warm. You just have to change your mind about how you are and you will be different."

 EVERY TIME I am cold, I think of that. I have recognized both the folly of that statement and the truth. It is like one of those ancient proverbs that you have mull over for years as the words steep in your mind.

 I am not sure when he died in relationship to that quote, but it was probably not that long after. That quote, that moment stuck with me for years, mostly latent. Then probably 15 years or so later, I had a religious resurgence where I was praying the rosary and going to shrines regularly and then he came to me. My uncle Lloyd came to me in a dream and in my thoughts. I believed that he was telling me to reach out to my aunt Marion, his wife, who had been estranged from the rest of the family (there is an entire book in that story). So I did.

 Lloyd's son, Ray, is my godfather. I don't know him very well, but we have reconnected through Facebook and we enjoy commenting on each other's posts. I have one memory of him as a child. Ray had the coolest rock collection I have ever seen. There we geodes and polished rocks and they all looked precious to a 6-year old. I remember that he gave me and my sister, Amy, a polished rock. It was so precious to me yet such a seemingly trivial act of generosity. It is only in the writing of this that I now see a connection with my own fascination with polished rocks and crystals. For a long time, I carried a little leather pouch around in my pocket filled with select crystals and rocks. They made me feel good.

 There is no trivial amount of Love. A drop of water from the ocean, contains the whole ocean within. Water wisely.
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