"One of my children"

This was originally posted on September 27, 2005.

I grew up as a preacher's kid, and my sister and I made regular appearances in my father's sermons as everyday examples of the principles he was teaching from the Bible. Since there were only two of us, he did his best to preserve our anonymity by starting the often-humorous stories with "One of my children ... "

It never worked all that well. All the congregation had to do was look up in the second row on the left-hand side and see which sister was laughing and which sister was blushing. It was a kind attempt, though, and in that tradition, I will leave a thin veil of secrecy over the identity of the child I am referring to.

One of my children spent the morning drifting in and out of the room I used to use for piano teaching. It still contains my piano and a large collection of music, but has little else in it aside from a few plants on a small table, a desk against one wall, and plenty of sunlight. It has become the home base for the kids' train set. (You didn't think a train set needed a home base? You'd be amazed at how far a 30-piece wooden train track set can migrate.) I assumed that this was what kept drawing my child's interest, since that is a frequent activity on sunny mornings.

It was a faulty assumption. It turned out that I had left a very large bin of raisins on the kitchen counter after fixing breakfast, instead of returning it to the childproofed cupboard where it normally lives, locked away from inquisitive little fingers. One of my children had spirited it away into the piano room out of my line of vision, and made several trips to visit it over the course of the morning.

Do you have any idea what a cup of raisins will do to a child who is still in diapers?