It was one of those days. You get them, you know. When life somehow just feels like a heavier weight for what it ought to be, like you’re so heavy that you have a backpack nearby you, invisible, full of bricks. Behind, I had bills, the notifications on my phone kept blinking and everything felt as if it was getting close to me. There was a grind, responsibilities, pressure of keeping it all together. I needed air, space—something.
So I decided to hit pause.
And I turned towards my little boy with a mop of messy hair, Nolan, and said: “Let’s get a milkshake.” No big plans. No distractions. Just the two of us. A small escape from the chaos.
The one with the old checkerboard tile floors at the back still back then, and the booths still squeak when you breathe too hard. You aren’t fancy, not fancy, but you are you – familiar. Vanilla milkshake, no whip, extra cherry has always been Nolan’s order. I just sat back on one of those cold, metal chairs, pretending I was present but floating far away somewhere in my thoughts, as he ordered with the kind of confidence only a five year old can have.
By then I saw him standing next to another little boy, he or she might have been three or four. The boy had sneakers that laced up in such tiny sizes and well past the point of normal wear or hygiene, and his pants were the type of baggy gray shorts that toddlers always seem to have been swimming in. They hadn’t spoken a word. No introductions. No questions. Just… this unspoken ease.
The way Nolan walked up to him was like two friends that had known each other forever, and he slung one arm around the boy’s shoulder. And without a word he held out his milkshake, the one I just bought him, and gave both hands over it. Such a holy ritual was it, two small faces leaning in sipping from the same straw.
Neither germ nor manners nor “mine.” And they didn’t ask where he from or what language he spoke or whose parents he was from. They weren’t concerned whether they looked alike. There was no hesitation. Just an instinctive act of kindness, of connection. A moment in which there is nothing pure or uncomplicated.
Milkshake clutched in my hand, I sat, frozen, watching.
I noticed the other boy’s mom coming out of the restroom then. I paused mid step and caught that moment too, so she did. Our eyes met. There were no words said between us just a mutual understanding. The smile that she gave had been tired but warm and she might have needed it as much as I needed it: something that honest.
At that moment, Nolan turned and confronted me with the now half full milkshake in his hand and said, with a shrug.
“Dad, can’t we always share?”
He didn’t mean it metaphorically. When I asked him what he was talking about, he was only talking about his milkshake. That was the truth but the weight of it was heavier than I expected.
We can always share. Time. Patience. Space. Forgiveness. Joy.
I think about that moment a lot in the days that have passed since. About how we build walls and what walls we can put up to create what is ours, barricade who is in and who is out. But kids? They start with none of that. Just open hearts and sticky fingers.
That day, Nolan taught me that the connection wasn’t about the words or the status it was earned. It just is. This when we stop looking for differences and would hold out what we have in milkshake and moment, and we merely would say this is for both of us.
That’s why I took my son out for a milkshake and I was thinking oh I’m doing something for him.
It turned out that he was the one who was doing something for me.
Has there ever been a moment when a child gave you unexpected wisdom?