Tar-jay Doors

A cold early March wind blew in our faces. My wife’s longer gait and more urgent pace had created distance between her, and my daughter and me.

My daughter’s two year old hand held mine. She didn't seem bothered by the cold wind or the increasing distance between her mother, the shopping cart and her little brother in cargo.

She didn’t seem affected at all until Target’s automatic doors began to close behind her mother and company. A brief “Nooooo-” was uttered into the cold air by her tiny voice. A ‘no’ cut short when the automatic door fully opened again for us having never fully closed.

That moment, that brief moment between the door starting to close and reopen she learned about automatic doors. She doesn’t know how they work, why they are there or even what they are called. All she knows is that when you get near them they open. She’ll never have that urgent ‘No’ moment again. The ‘No’ moment was the first and last time she’ll worry about that kind of door closing and separating her from her mom and brother.

From now until the day she finally learns everything there is to know about automated doors, such doors will be filed away in her little mind next to other kinds of doors.

Doors at home are easy, usually open, have metal things you can turn, sometimes you can’t, they are stuck (locked) but she doesn’t know why and it doesn’t happen enough to inquire about this type of state for a door.

Some doors slide like the back porch door. Perhaps she thinks those doors are only for dogs or only to go outside. This would make sense as this is the only sliding door she has encountered. Then there's the door to daddy’s work, the doors there need ‘beeped’ before they can be opened. She doesn’t know why and doesn’t seem to care but daddy has a square thing on a necklace that makes the doors beep open. From what I can tell the doors that need to be ‘beeped’ are her favorite, always good for an impressed cheer from her.

She doesn’t have a name for the Target doors yet or “Tar-Jay” as we say in our family in a sarcastic quasi-french accent in order to make Target seem more fancy, after all, it’s not like it’s Walmart. We’re fancy like that.

I’m glad I was holding her hand for that moment. I’m sure there are lots of little firsts, little discoveries each day for her nobody notices. Findings filed away amongst like objects, words and situations. Filed away similarly to the section for knowledge about doors and how they work.

I walked with her throughout Target, through the frozen foods section. I watched her reflection in the glass at looking at everything, soaking up every object with a child's hunger for knowledge. As her face traveled down the glass the world looked so big compared to her little face.

We passed through an aisle, this one had flavored jams right at her eye level.

“Strawberry” she said pointing. Pointing, not asking, pointing, not demanding. Just an object with a name, a noise which matched. Her call of “Strawberry” was a tiny call to the world that despite the world filled with unknowns, this was something she knew. Take that, big mysterious world.

Next came pondering, complete with tiny index finger to mouth in intense contemplation. “This one” she said pointing to one of the two different types of strawberry jam. Up until her thoughtful decision I hadn’t noticed that several different kinds of strawberry jams were down there.

I can’t read my daughter’s mind, but if I could I’m betting the cute little gears turning were doing so for one of two reasons, or perhaps a combination of both.

One, she was mimicking her mother, and what she thinks one does in a store, especially a grocery store. You stop, look at two similar looking objects, decide on one, and then put it in your cart. And/or two, most of last football season in order to make her pick for college football she would decide between two logos, usually going with the animal mascots. Last year was a good year for animal mascots and she won the bowl pick’em challenge. This despite picking “The Lady” her name for the Florida State Seminoles mascot, a name which is technically incorrect but on the other,....oh so right. She was told she won, but there were no prizes so I’m sure she’s forgotten about her victory by now.

Maybe her college bowl pick’em victory will be her required short personal story on Jeopardy someday. “I understand you won something special at a very young age” says some guy who replaced Alex Trebek in a suit reading off a small piece of blue digital paper. “Yes I did! …..and my dad wrote a blog about it” she replies to the audience who chuckles at the novelty and nostalgia of a written blog.

Back in the present, and in the jam aisle to be more specific, we hear the far off distant wail of a tantrum coming from the toy section of Tar-jay. I am reminded of going to the store myself as a child. One of the first and sometimes only questions was if the toy section could be visited. Whether or not this question should be broached was based on the mood of whichever adult I was with and their mood at the time. When I grew out of asking this question my brother took up the mantle. He seemed not to bother taking the adult’s mood into consideration and bravely asked no matter the circumstances.

My daughter doesn’t yet know about the toy section, and that is fine by me. That is a discovery for another day.  

Post Script: Since writing this I have heard my daughter refer to a door’s state as being “locked” so more door knowledge has been filed away.