Letter to child Thelma on an afternoon in late summer

Dear Child,

Now that your Observing Apparatus is advancing at lightspeed, I spend just as much time gazing with you as I do gazing at you.

"Gazing with you" means arranging my body to replicate (as much as possible) your POV. If you’re floorwise on your stomach, so am I; if you are supine on a blanket in the park I’m supine beside you with our cheeks touching and eyes at companion level. 

The exploration at hand is this: in what ways do our perceptions overlap, and in what ways do they depart?

This is a question we will revisit from all angles—optical, social, intellectual, metaphysical—throughout our lives. If it is the act of Seeing that bonds us, rather than the virtues or demerits of the thing being Seen, perhaps we can be enlivened (not alienated) by such differences as will inevitably mark our visions of earth.

¿What do you think?

I’ll need to practice a lot. Western history, including my nano-patch of it, has not quite entrained this habit of mind in its participants.

Luckily your appetite for observation is boundless, and so too (or: therefore) will be my opportunities for reform. You are a child of ample gifts.

Love,
Moo