The Choice of Joy: Day 23, ‘One Small Step’ of a Different Kind

Please indulge me today.  I am a grandmother.  Most days I do my best to avoid boring others with deluges of anecdotes and pictures of my grandchildren, but today is not one of those days.  Today, I received new photos of my grandson from my daughter, always a joy. 

Clay is now nineteen months old.  The photos were of him in the play yard of a local park.  As I was downloading the pictures, one particular photograph stood out.

In the photo, he is in the process of taking a step, but his motion was different. 

Before, his steps were just as his classification as a toddler implies.  His steps were toddling, sort of like that of a penguin, with each flatfooted motion slapping to the ground, his body rocking left to right with each forward move.

But that has changed.  In the picture, he leads his forward motion with his heel first to the ground, and his body remains steady above his feet, no shifting, no toddling.  It is more the step of a man!  There is still a caution with the step, chin lowered, a certain concentration, but his step has changed.  There is a confidence with his walking that was not there in the toddler, less of the todder's preoccupation with remaining upright and more of an attention to where he is going.  It is a shift in consciousness, a new stage in his evolution toward his own unfolding.  

Maybe Clay’s step does not signal the grandness of the first human on the Moon with a world in witness.  But maybe that is what grandmothers are really for: to witness. 

And oh my joy at seeing Clay’s new step, his “one small step” of a different kind!