Nearly every Friday for the last year, I meet up with my friend S. and her now two-year-old son, Lasse. We meet in a nearby café for a leisurely chat. The only reason it is possible for S. and I to have a leisurely chat, is due to the construction site across from the café.
The going-ons prove an endless source of entertainment for Lasse. There are trucks, cranes, diggers, drillers, dirt, dust, mud, and all sorts of men walking around with hardhats gesticulating here-and-there.
Lasse is in paradise. His vocabulary is very precise when it comes to naming the different vehicles and pieces of machinery.
Unfortunately, my friends moved up to a lovely house in northern Germany early this week. Still, I came to the café this morning at our usual time. Part of me hoping they would be sitting at “our” table, with Lasse gazing out across the road at the big machines.
Instead, I sit here with my cup of Earl Grey tea, looking at the site and missing my little friend terribly. And, in all honesty, the magic of the construction site has vanished. Now, it is just a dirty loud site, lacking in any aesthetic beauty.
I just don’t think I can rediscover its charm on my own. Best to find another place. One not haunted with the enthusiasm and wonder of a little boy curiosity.
It is always very amazing to me how our perception can change because we're experiencing something in the company of somebody else. To the postive and to the negative. The piece of music that I love and that suddenly lacks all appeal because I'm playing it to someone who hates it, ot in your case the marvel of the construction site seen through the eyes of a toddler.
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