Filling Empty Spaces

Over the last two weeks Berkeley has had a toy fish bowl that she's greatly enjoyed putting things into and then taking those same things out of. She's had big developmental moments before: eating, sitting up, picking items up, and making noises to name a few, but this one has particularly struck me. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I was never one of those people who was excited about watching the different stages of child development and so I let the obvious stages pass by with less amazement than they are really due. The other factor, I think, is that many of the prior major development steps are not only big and obvious to even those who haven't watched closely the daily development of a child but they are also largely shared across the animal kingdom. Every animal in the world knows how to eat, most animals either know upon exiting the womb or egg, or shortly their afterward, how to manage their main mode of locomotion, and often the first thing done once an animal can breathe in air is to exhale it with some primal noise. Even the picking up of objects seems far from unique, my dogs move stuff all around the house, either by picking it up in their mouths or moving them with their paws. They can even understand different types of things: things dogs do not touch and things dogs are allowed to touch.

But yesterday Berkeley noticed a drawer on the coffee table, at the perfect height for her to pull it out and push it in. She grabbed the handle, opened it, recognized the empty space within, searched around for something on the floor within grabbing distance, picked up a Hot Wheel, and unceremoniously dropped it in the drawer. This pleased her enough that she then put a ball and two more Hot Wheels in the drawer. The next ten minutes consisted of me watching her take the ball out and then put it back in numerous times. In a sense she has discovered a tool. I didn't force it on her, like the spoon she eats with, instead it's her own little discovery, made possible by hundreds of thousands of years of ancestors developing brains that find the use of empty spaces obvious. The Universe has been split in two for her. It now consists of things that possess empty spaces and things that go into empty spaces.

She is now, and has been for 18 months, marching down the path that is humanity's destiny. And I now look forward to more moments like this one, when she looks at an empty box and not only thinks about what can go in it but how it relates to the pains she feels in her heart after losing her first boyfriend (I had no intention of crying while writing this but no one is ever prepared for the Spanish Inquisition). How filling is related to feeling. How people can be sad and lonely, broken and empty, and how she can fill them with joy and how she can be filled by the joy and love of others. And how someone, even a child, can make you realize you had more space available than you ever imagined.