This is not just another proud grandparent post. Well, it kind of is. But hopefully it's subtle so you'll barely notice.
Here goes.
Right smack in the middle of Harriet’s third year she proclaimed, “I just want to be four.”
Like being three is such a rough year. I’ve asked around. Nobody remembers their third year. But a lot of folks recall pieces of their fourth one. In fact, that’s often where memories get a foothold.
Maybe that’s the point.
Maybe that’s why Harriet wanted to be four—to move on to a year she’d remember.
Or to move away from a year she wanted to forget.
Maybe it was because she knew that while still in her threes she’d lose her two front teeth climbing up metal slide steps where she literally did not get a foothold.
Or maybe it was the time she banged her eye on the handlebars of her tricycle.
Still three.
Come to think of it, her older sister was 6 at the time, so maybe that was it—maybe she wanted to be like Ramona, but figured she’d just shoot for four to start out with.
But for whatever reason, Harriet just wanted to be four.
We do that sometimes, don’t we. Sometimes we are having a tough year, or tough season, or tough spate of time and we just want to move on.
Or maybe the time is not so tough, in fact it is quite good, but nonetheless, we are still anticipating that next thing.
Or maybe we are more wistful about it. We’d like to have something on the horizon but that thing is just far enough away that we feel a bit like a ship adrift in the doldrums.
But for whatever reason, we just want to be four.
And there’s nothing wrong with that—to want to be four. In fact, it’s good to want to be four. It’s good to want something else. It’s good to grow, to stretch, to dream, to plan.
Unless.
(There’s always an unless, isn’t there).
Unless, we forget to be three. Not forget that we were three. (We already decided that we don’t remember that year anyway). But to forget that we are three. Let’s not forget to be three while we are three.
Let’s not forget to do all those things that are set before us while we are three so when we get to four we will have brought our three-year-old tools with us.
The good, the bad, the mundane.
The good encourages us.
The bad help us to grow.
The mundane gives us time to reflect.
These are the tools that make four older than three. These are the tools that make our next thing more healthy than our now thing. These are the tools that help us do three well.
So let’s do three well. In fact, let’s rejoice in being three!
Four is on its way.