I tried to explain that it was hard to know who would have blue or brown eyes and that I didn’t know how one person had blue and the other brown. She politely told me that Allah determined who had blue eyes. Never in my 65 years had anyone referred to Allah in a conversation with me and yet here was this delightful five year old making a very obvious conclusion. She also informed me that Allah was God to people who are Muslim. “I know,” I said feeling a bit inadequate.
The girl and my granddaughter were playing when the girl said to her, “You are a white person and I am a brown person. There are white and brown and other color people in the world, did you know that?” What could I say? I knew that too but not quite in such a simple and open manner.
As she stared at me with my grey beard, bald head and considerable wrinkles she asked, “Are you her daddy or grandfather?” I was pleased that the inquiry was even necessary but I admitted that I was her grandfather. “I thought so, my grandfather is dead,” she said. “Mine too I admitted.” “I bet they are friends in heaven,” she said. “I bet they are too.”
Those fifteen minutes with a five year old whose parents were from Bangladesh (she made it very clear to me that she was born in America and she only spoke a few words in Bangladeshi) made quite an impression.
It is all so simple, she addressed and resolved some of the world’s biggest problems with innocence and she gave me a new outlook on life. Let’s hope I don’t forget the lesson. It is too bad children don’t run the world.
