Trump vs. Toddler.

You forget how astonishingly aware of the world a toddler can be. At least I do. It’s been years since my own kids were that age.

Then a very small houseguest arrived for a visit. Not yet three years old. In constant motion. Filled to the brim with curiosity.

In a maneuver that would destroy what’s left of my knees, he’d squat down until his diaper hung about an inch off the floor and his eyes were even with the old toys we’d searched out from the basement in preparation for his visit. He played in that position for so long my joints ached in sympathy.

Then he popped up and ran delighted for the stairs, challenging me to follow.

Mostly what he did during his visit was absorb. It’s fascinating to watch. At two-something-years-old he is absorbed by world. Not self.

He notices everything. You can see the wheels turning as he processes, asks questions, and files away the scraps of information that will someday add up to the person he becomes.

You hope and pray it’s a good world he spends every waking minute sponging up. That there are no serpents in the garden.

But these are unsettling times to be a parent or a grandparent. Some days you read the news and it’s hard to imagine how we even get through the next couple of years, let alone arrive at the other end with our ideals and moral code intact.

So consider this true story from my days spent with a tiny houseguest.

We were in the basement, with an old Brio wooden railroad set spread across the carpet. That’s when the dog went nuts upstairs. Barking, barking, barking, like the end of the world had arrived to our neighborhood. Even if it was probably just a sighting of some squirrels out on in the yard.

“What do you suppose can be upsetting the dog?” his mother asked.

Out of nowhere the two-year-old replied, “Donald Trump.”

As the writer telling this story I imagine it’s my job to offer some interpretation. Dig deep into our national psyche and figure out how a two-year-old has come to be so aware of things like our toxic politics and self-absorbed president. Offer some guidance as to what it all means, the moment our great and glorious American experiment finally lost its innocence or something like that.

Somehow I think the unvarnished artifact is even more profound, so I’ll just leave us all to ponder that.

Out of the mouths of babes, as the saying goes.