I was hiking on a nearby mountain trail like many in California, a dirt road carved into the ridgelines and hillsides, used by fire trucks on the sad occasion of a brush fire, but through most of the year by hikers like me. I was on my way back from what is a 3 mile round trip and as I came over a hill I saw a mother and her toddler son, 2–3 years old, holding hands, walking down the hill ahead of me.
They paused and she pointed down the road and then she started waiving at someone farther down, a father, who had set out ahead of them. He waved back, as did the little boy, and then beckoned them to hurry up. It was a moderate downhill slope, easy to run on, and I had almost passed them by walking fast. The mother started running, holding the boy’s hand, and he joined in. Watching this, I thought, “Oh,…this may not go so well,” their size and stride-length so different.
What really made it a disaster of sorts was that he was, after all, a toddler, and running is certainly a new skill, not to mention the downhill grade on a dirt road, and then trying to hang on to mom’s hand…. I cringed as I saw him stumble, and then spin and bang against her leg, suspended in air only by the strength of his mother’s grip. But his stumble created all sorts of strange momentums, and swinging pendulum-like his knees bounced off the hard dirt and then spun him out behind her, his mother’s grip failing and landing him with a thump on his butt, and he skidded onto his side.
As this happened, she turned to try and grab him as he was slipping away, but to no avail. when I saw him hit the ground hard like that, I prepared myself to hear him cry and even felt sad for how scary that might have been.
And then he laughed.
He reached his hand up and his mother pulled him back up. He was happy. Holding her hand, he started running again, even before she could get turned back around, as if he was saying, “Let’s do that again!”
As I passed the three of them, I thought, “Oh, to be so young that you laugh when you fall down.”
