Grey Whale spy hopping in San Ignacio Lagoon

Happiness is Making Friends

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed. ~ Khalil Gibran

I love making friends with toddlers, I love their honesty as well as their creative dishonesty. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that they have not yet been fully initiated into the social contract of “polite society”. This allows them to be utterly brutally honest. Where as an adult you would never dare to point out that a person is overweight. I have seen and been the target of a toddler asking, why are you fat? And after giving a rambling, babbling answer about eating too much, you usually then get, why do you eat too much, just don’t do that. Of course they are not fully aware of all of the complexities of life and society and as such their kid logic often doesn’t hold up, but I find it refreshing.

On the flip side, I really love their creative dishonesty. It has it’s downsides, I will never forget the havoc that my nephew brought on one night. My grandmother had called my sister’s home and he answered the phone. When she asked if he could talk to my sister he said she was in bed crying, that the police had come and arrested his father for hitting her and hung up. None of this was remotely true and it precipitated calls to my mother who then also called my sister, everyone in a panic. This is the downside of toddler creativity.

The upside for me is their storytelling. I lived with my sister’s family for a time as I was preparing to hike the Appalachian Trail. Her other children were busy in activities, my brother-in-law worked late and my niece was a toddler, four years-old at the time. And as a toddler she had a set dinner time that needed to be kept, but that didn’t coincide with her siblings later schedule. So I happily ate early dinner with her every night. And every night I would ask her the same question as we started dinner, “how was your day?” Every day she would proceed to tell me all about her exciting day at day care. This would involve her and her imaginary friend woowoo taking out a boat on the river or going shopping. Sometimes my sister would overhear and interject with, “that isn’t true.” I would send her away and let my little niece continue. The stories were beautiful and insane and made no sense and I absolutely loved them.

I spent this past week in Baja, Mexico at a camp in a lagoon up the coast from Cabo San Lucas in the breeding and birthing grounds for Pacific Grey Whales. Every day I was blessed to be out on the lagoon, three times a day whale watching and having up close encounters with Grey Whales. I’ll most more on this, including pictures and videos next week on the blog. If you’re interested in those, I’m currently editing and working through my images and posting them to my Instagram account, @michael_rev_kane.

In the group I was in, the group that shared the same boat and guide was a toddler. We became friends on the second day. She very much reminded me of my youngest niece, who we call the boss. She is brash and confident and will in an instant turn it all around and melt your heart. My new little friend was very much the same. We bonded over a couple of games we played on the boat, one was to ask me if I new every single Pokemon, of which I only know two. We played guess what animal I’m thinking about and one hysterical game where she pretended to remove her fingers and magically return them.

The tables in the dinning hall had six seats. Our boat was comprised of seven people, so the first few meals I had I floated between tables. But after becoming friends, my young companion decided I needed to eat with them. So she got the people running the camp to add a seventh chair to their table. Then she proceeded at each meal to tell everyone where they would sit and I was always assigned to sit next to her. My favorite part of our friendship was our storytelling, she told me all about how she had met and talked with aliens by going into space in a spaceship she built herself. She kindly offered to build me one and outfit me with a spacesuit and all the rocket fuel I needed, all for six dollars. I made up a story about a pet bug named Herman and she grilled me all about him and his life. We had a wonderful time together. On our flight out of the camp back to Cabo, she couldn’t set next to me and I slept on the flight. When we landed she came up to me, her family was heading to a different terminal at the airport, and she asked me how my nap was? The she took my hand, looked me in the eyes and said, “I’m going to miss you.” She totally melted my heart in that moment. She was such a sweet kid and had an equally sweet brother and getting to know them added tremendously to the enjoyment of the week.

There’s a joy and happiness in making a new friend, it is there no matter how old or young they might be. ~ Rev Kane