I don’t really remember being four years old, but there are a few stories I have about my life at four. And I’m not sure I’m remembering the event itself or the memories of the event and I suppose that doesn’t matter much anyway. But the things I do remember are events that had consequences that made me question why. You know, “why does that work like that” things?

My granddaughter is four. I was with her yesterday and while I was watching her do her four-year-old stuff had a memory of a feeling I had when I was four. Actually, it was multiple “feelings.” And a bunch  of “why?” She had a home-based accident and encounter with a scared cat a couple of days ago, and she wound up with a few stitches on her forehead, some gnarly scratches on her face from the cat, and a big swollen eye. I went to see her yesterday with my mom. My mom went and bought her some toys and we drove to see the little girl with all the brand new injuries. We were traumatized by the pictures we’d seen of her after the accident. Hardwood floors, socks, and bed frame rails make a treacherous race track for four-year-olds.

If her eye wasn’t swollen shut and she didn’t have all those scratches and bandaids, I wouldn’t have known of her injuries. She acted like normal and even begged me to come see her blood on the floor. It was a goodly amount, yet to be cleaned up and sitting there like a landmark. I can understand exactly how that worked. The crash, then the blood, then my daughter had to rush the little girl to the emergency room, and cleaning up the mess of blood was nowhere in the schedule. She showed me the blood and said, “That’s my blood, Grandpa.” There was a touch of wonder in her eyes when she looked at me. I remember that feeling pretty well: The first time I realized that what usually stays inside me sometimes gets out.

We opened up her gifts and she spent some time coloring in a new coloring book and playing with her new game. Then her mom said she had to put an ice pack on her swollen eye. There was reluctance. In fact, Xyla ignored that noise and it took me back to when I ignored something I didn’t have any desire in doing.. Finally, after some extra duty cajoling, she sat down next to me on the couch and her mom fluffed the pillows so she could sit up against them. And her mom placed an ice pack on her swollen eye and made Xyla hold it.

She was looking at me with her one good eye, and I could see that look in her eyes. That look I remember as desperation. I remember that well, too. Knowing the task was going to take forever and the results may be, “who knows?” The drive to move forward always in humans makes sitting still hard. It’s worse when you’re four and have things to do now. She held the pack on her eyes for a while…at least thirty seconds, then dropped it. Her mom told her she needed to leave it on her eye for, “twenty minutes.” Four-year-olds don’t know twenty minutes. Xyla’s eye glazed over and she looked at me again with that look. It is so familiar to me, but I can’t really capture it here. It’s that look when you know you have to do something, but it means you’ll be doing something you don’t want to do, and you don’t really know how to pull the trigger and zero desire to do so. Her legs were bolted straight out in front of her and twitching from the angst inside her, and her mouth was an upside-down smile and not a fake frown. The frown was one of those of incredible sadness deep down inside.

Her lips never quivered. She was not going to cry. The little gears inside her little head were searching…searching, trying to find a way out of this, but all the while knowing that it was inevitable. She was going to have to hold that ice-pack on her eye again. And when she did, the same thing happened. A good solid thirty seconds of that healing, cold ice and then it was over and she dropped the pack again.

This time there was another look I remembered from my past. When she knew she had held that ice pack on her eye for at least twenty minutes, but wasn’t sure anyone else knew it was long enough. Then the desperation look took center stage again. I kept thinking if you had an icepack that had a headband attached to it, she’d leave it alone. Maybe tie it around her head with a sweater or something. But that was just fanciful thinking on my part. We got her to try again a few times with similar results, and finally, her mom decided to leave it be for a while. My mom and I had to leave. We hugged the little sweetie and she was all happy like she always is. I was expecting trauma, and all I saw was a confident, happy, rambunctious kid who learned about patience, or at least what it feels like to try and have it.

Kids learn so much so fast. All the shit we do and see, hear, feel,  and taste…all of it, is brand new at some point and the revelations are fast and furious at four. Later they come less often, and many times are predictable, but when a big one hits, you can see the wonder in my eyes. Or terror, as the case might be.