This Kind Of Genius

When I arrived on the scene, he was in a full-throated cry for mommy. He wanted her, and only her, to push him on the swing, but she was down at the bottom of the outdoor classroom, the parent-teacher responsible for the workbench. There was already another adult there whose offers to push him he'd repeatedly rejected as an inadequate surrogacy. He only wanted mommy.

Mommy could hear him, of course, because moms can always hear their own child crying.

"I want mommy to push me," he cried, holding himself up by the swing chain, looking down the hill to where she was helping his classmates with their screw drivers and wrenches, her cooperative preschool "job" for the day.

"Maybe we should go down and ask your mommy," I suggested. "I'll go with you." I offered my hand, but he wouldn't take it, increasing his volume until it was certain that everyone could now hear him.

Responding as if to a call for help, she rushed to him and took his hand, a girl he'd only just met the day before, looking him in the eye. Her expression was so full of compassion that he stopped crying instantly.

Wordlessly she walked him down the hill, through a crowd of kids, while we adults stood out of the way.

And still without a word, she turned him over to his mommy who had come up the hill to meet them halfway.

I have great hopes for the future of our world because there is this kind of genius is in it.

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