I was telling my
friend Carmen about my visit to a friend's house and about Maria, his
daughter, in particular. We were
vaguely talking about small children and strange things they do, when the conversation turned to a book that Carmen had read parts of. I think her
family owns it.
In the prologue to this book with no title, the author with no name recalls the events immediately following the birth of one of her children. At the time, the couple already had a two-year-old son. As soon as the newborn was brought home from the hospital, the two-year-old son asked to hold the smaller child. But when the infant was put into his arms, the boy would specify that he wanted to be ALONE with the baby. Understandably, the parents were unsettled and didn't think this was a good idea.
Hell, even I felt apprehensive just HEARING the story.
Anyway, a few months went by and still the two-year-old insisted that he wanted to be alone with the baby. The parents put it off as long as they could, hoping that the older kid would forget, but his demands just got more and more persistent. Finally, they agreed to leave the two very young children in a room alone for a few minutes. Standing just outside the room, they listened for anything out-of-the-ordinary, while their son was FINALLY alone with the baby. And this is what they heard.
The two-year-old said to the newborn: "Tell me what God is like, cause I'm starting to forget.."
This wasn't a religious family, and in fact the child hadn't really been introduced to even the idea of God yet. So how do you explain that? I don't know whether to believe it or not (my friend says it sounds like an urban legend to him, albeit a pleasant one), but simply by the force of the story, I was floored.