The little girl in dark pink and pale green won't hold my hand. Out for a walk - traffic close enough to make grandad anxious. Just over a year old, but already making her own way in the world!
Who will she become? What will be my influence? Unanswerable questions.
She is a mix of genes (a quarter mine), so far unknown gifts from her Creator, and the unknowable effects of every single contact and experience of every single day of her life. Her parents and the environment they create have a huge influence, and many of the most influential contacts and effects have already happened. But there are so many more to come.
As she gets older, each will dilute or moderate earlier contacts - and she has still to meet many of the key people in her life, still to live through suffering and tragedy, to face disappointment, still to discover that her plans are not the only plans.
I rush to keep up, pick her up to cross to the park, let her down again.
I try to walk holding her hand - now more for my comfort than her safety! She will have none of it, rushing off to chase shadows, make friends with seagulls, find ducks to feed - all in a world of her own imagining.
I know my place; even at (nearly) one and half she needs to know that she can make her way alone. (And I do notice the occasional gratifying glimpse back to make sure she is not too alone.)
She's a lucky little girl - parents who love her and spoil her (just a little), a loving community of friends with babies of their own, plenty of stimulation and attention, clean water and enough to eat, a warm and safe place to live, and (maybe with some little influence) four grandparents who think she is the most wonderful little girl ever born.
So, she rushes off over the playing fields, a spirited bundle of apparent independence and gifted with huge potential. I follow, keeping watch, almost overwhelmed contemplating the persons she might become and the worlds she might live and love in.
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