Go Ask Dad: Little for the better

My 6-year-old daughter, sitting in her wheelchair, asked a mom to sign her leg cast in the school parking lot, which caught this woman off-guard, for we adults expect our children, not us, to be the ones invited to scrawl their names across the hard plaster. To this woman’s credit, she recovered with a smile, bent down, and took the Sharpie offered to her.

Then another hesitation as she considered the cast, which, like a wall of graffiti, was covered with illegible signatures among peace signs, hearts and rainbows. Seeing this difficulty, my girl rotated her hips in her wheelchair, turning her cast on its side to reveal a small patch of free real estate behind her knee.

As this mom began to draw, I thought about how an older preacher used to end every Sunday service by saying, “Go move the world a little.” Certainly, there are situations that happen to us over which we have no control. Perhaps you or your loved one break a bone. There are tragedies and atrocities on the other side of the world as well as right here in our community. What can one person do? If you seem to despair or become cynical (despair’s cousin), then remember that you can take an extra moment with the person in front of you.

My child grinned at this relative stranger, who, after handing back the pen, straightened up and smiled back. Then we all went our separate ways; only we had been moved a little for the better.

Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of Little Big Moments, a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems. Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.