Soupy heart

Since they were tiny, both of our children have delighted us by looking for shapes in their food...look it's a bridge, a nose, a dog they would say. As adults, Ian and I look at these things that they show us and are just about able to make out which part they may have construed to be something other than a slice of bread edged with bite marks. We have old books full of optical illusions, the type where there first looks to be a man's face...but if you study it for half an hour longer the realisation suddenly jumps out from the page that from another angle, when you allow your vision to be drawn further into the page, it is also a vase. How perfectly lovely that children spend so much of their time not limiting themselves to looking at things simply for what they are, but are constantly seeking out an otherness to their surroundings, finding a place for an alternative interpretation.

One day last week Dinosaur-boy and I sat together eating soup and ciabatta for our lunch. 'Look, Mummy, it's a heart!' he had said giggling. I had looked up expecting to see an unrecognisable splot of soup on the breakfast bar...but was amazed to see that the soup from his spoon really had been spilt into the most perfectly-formed heart.

I shall miss sharing lunch with him in September...I wonder if I shall start looking for shapes in my solitary lunches and taking pictures of my finds to show when they come home...or if I will lose the will to bother making lunch at all once I'm home alone. Probably the latter, children are so good for giving adults a structure to their days.