Becoming a child again

Every day when my husband Jonathan comes home from work, he asks me what I wrote about that day. I never give the same answer twice. For example:

After that, he says, “Interesting.” Because it is.

Most of the writing I do is for WORLDkids, WORLD News Group’s magazine, website, and apps for children ages 7–10. I prefer writing for kids on news topics. Adults know so much more than I do about politics and the economy—and pretty much everything else—that I feel (perhaps wrongly) that I have little hope of informing them. But kids are different. I can enjoy the luxury of explaining news items to myself while I explain them to the kids. Rather than explore the legion subtleties tied up in every newsworthy issue, you get to say, “Look at God’s world! Isn’t this amazing?” You get to choose a few subtleties to explain too. But for the most part you are just becoming a child again, giving a fresh stretch to your stiffening capacity for natural surprise. At one time in my life, as I watched friends pursue journalistic tracks geared toward adult subtlety and debate, I thought I would follow the same path. But now, given the choice between the economics of sugar subsidies and the length of a just-discovered dinosaur femur, I will always choose the femur.

This week I told Jonathan, “I’m writing about Sister Blandina, the fastest nun in the Wild West. She stood up to Billy the Kid.” My husband, maybe more than anyone I know, has kept his childhood curiosity. He said he wanted to hear the whole story. “I will tell it to you one day,” I promised. “But so far I am only a few pages into her diary, and she is just getting on the train to Trinidad.” Sister Blandina, long dead, popped up in recent news because the Roman Catholic Church is considering her for sainthood. The news opens itself naturally into the wild stories from Blandina’s life, and then into the nitty-gritty questions for kids: What was the Wild West really like? What does it really mean to be a saint?

I don’t know how I fell into this writerly slot except by providence. I certainly did not plan it. My peers grew up with this beloved publication, but I did not. Most of them remember the large posters that came stashed inside the old issues. Some even still have those posters hanging on the backs of closet or basement doors in their childhood homes as relics of their homeschool educations.

I remember hearing at a writing conference the principal perk of writing for children: You have earned fans for a lifetime. I cannot believe that perk is principal. I think the best part is becoming a child yourself.