JOY ALONG THE WAY: RAMBLING WITH THE YOUNG

There was a very popular card game Lou, Lillian, Mama, Grandma and I played. It was called "Authors." Perhaps there is still such a game. I hope so and that it may have the ramifications as I have had from playing it.

On the cards were pictured the authors we read and studied then -- Hawthorne, Irving, Longfellow, Poe, Emerson, Alcott, etc. Along with their pictures were four listings of their main works, well, maybe some of them not so main works. Under Hawthorne there was, of course, "The Scarlet Letter" and "The House of Seven Gables," but also "Little Annie's Ramble." the latter being only a selection from "Hawthorne's "Twice Told Tales."

Later, when studying Hawthorne more in depth in school and especially "Little Annie's Ramble," which title had fascinated me when playing "Authors," I wondered why that tale was included, apparently on a par with "The Scarlet Letter." I think I now know.

Hawthorne was saying how important it is for the old person to have a day or at least a few hours with a young child to renew a child's fresh perspective of the world.

Hawthorne's old man, which one is led to believe is himself in the tale, takes little Annie into the bustling city to get a child's eye view of things that have long become jaded and ordinary to the old man.

So now I like to have a ramble with a little one who, for the first time, has seen a poppy in bloom. "It looks like a shower massager or an upside-down feather duster." See what a new perspective I can get. I don't even know what a shower massager looks like.

When Lauren was little we often rambled about the park or the back yard. Once, for the first time, she saw a line of ants, each one carrying something and disappearing beneath the sidewalk.

"What are they carrying, Grandma?"

"I don't know," I replied, failing to add that I knew it was some kind of food they were storing away in some underground chamber.

"It's their purses," she explained and then added, "They must be going to church."

I let the description stand. It seemed such a delightful explanation.

We wondered what an under-the-sidewalk ant church house would look like.

"It'll have stained-glass windows and a bell in a bell tower," she surmised, no doubt thinking of the little cardboard, satin covered church we'd recently made from milk cartons to add to our little village.

"Where do you think it is located?" I asked.

She thought for a while and then, putting down a tiny finger on a spot of the concrete walk, said, "Right about here."

"Do you suppose if we stepped hard on that spot it would make the bell ring?" I asked. She tried it, stars in her eyes. It didn't ring. "Too far down," I concluded. But, to this day, every time I step in or near that spot, I smile and there's a ringing in my heart.

Hawthorne summed up "Little Annie's Ramble" thus: "After drinking from those fountains of still fresh existence, we shall return into the crowd ... to struggle onward and do our part in life ... with a kinder and purer heart and a spirit more lightly wise."

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.