“So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them.”
I took my two children for a walk in the woods in which we came upon a mother and her two children. Her older son was climbing conjoined trees that shared a broad, sloped trunk. This served as a welcome ramp to an unplanned playdate when he invited my son to climb with him.
Our boys turned out to be similar in age and temperament, so when they tired of the tree her son invited my son on their hike. We ended up walking together for more than an hour and a half, despite our being strangers.
This impromptu relationship happens all the time on playgrounds: children hit it off and the parents are stuck having to acknowledge each other or not. We parents would be wise to follow the lead of our kids who play together simply because they are in the same place at the same time. We want them to learn how to make friends—we can be friendly too.
Yet, we have more inhibition and don’t attempt conversation beyond what we can say through our kids: Tell them how old you are. Tell them what’s your sister’s name. Let this nice boy go first. As we kept hiking and I realized I would be interacting with this mother for far longer than we would have on a playground, I began to note factors for how we needed to relate to each other.
The obvious consideration was that we were opposite genders and both solo parenting. This went without saying, so we didn’t say anything about it. But when she said of her son, “his dad has him on Sundays,” my concern felt moot. And it soon came up that my wife was at work, which left nothing for us to fear or fancy in the other.
I thought of the Graham/Pence rule I observe but rationalized that we were in a public area and with our children. Another hiker might have thought we were a family of six but what could they do with that? We weren’t.
Next, I heard her encourage in her son a respect for the nature around him. And though she didn’t call it “creation,” I considered her teaching common ground. (Later, we discovered we both study the Bible. Had we known this earlier, it might have engendered a stronger assumption of safety and kinship.)
I also heard her discipline with patience, addressing the heart behind the misbehavior more than the unruliness—as my wife and I try to do with our kids. Neither of us resorted to empty threats or promising candy. I wondered if we parented that way in front of each other because we were in front of each other. Does a parent parent around another parent genuinely or ideally?
My greatest lesson from the hike comes from that obvious dynamic: I am a man and she is a woman. We remained perfect strangers, not even swapping names. We had no future to affect how we spoke or behaved—which is not to say we were without consequences to consider, but that we were simply partners in humanity. “Male and female He created them.” I saw her only as a woman, a sister almost. No more, no less. No less, no more.
– Scot Bellavia
