The Ring of Keys

My husband was in a conversation recently with one of our daughters. They were talking about her middle child — a granddaughter of ours with a quick mind, a short attention span, and a way of getting easily bored with things. Our daughter was describing her with the kind of smile a parent gets when they're talking about a child who keeps them on their toes — affectionate, a little amused, clearly endeared.

And my husband said, almost quietly, "I see myself most in her."

Then he told a story I'd heard before about being that kind of boy himself. Teachers tried to slow him down and keep him in line because his energy got ahead of the lesson. And about his sixth grade teacher — a man named Mr. Vogel — who did something none of the others had done.

"Mr. Vogel unlocked something in me."

That phrase has been with me ever since.

Mr. Vogel was able to harness my husband's energy. He saw it for what it was — a busy mind that needed somewhere to go — and gave him and outlet — a project.

The assignment was this: out of construction cardboard, build every bridge over the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon.

My husband spent weeks on it. He measured and cut, studied photographs, figured out how arches carry weight and how engineers solve for load. He started to see how mathematics, which he was already good at, quietly held up everything you could stand on. The bridges gave the numbers something to do.

What started as a way to keep a restless boy occupied turned into something else. It unlocked an interest in drafting and design — in the architecture of things, how they were engineered, how they held together. In high school, he took every drafting class the school offered. The discipline he learned in those classrooms — looking carefully at a problem, thinking through structure, working out a solution — became part of how he sees the world.

He worked as a manager for a commercial bank for over a dozen years, and has been the CFO of a nonprofit organization for nearly three decades, often overseeing building and construction projects. A stack of cardboard in sixth grade quietly shaped the way he thinks, the way he solves problems, the way he sees how things hold together. It shaped his life, in ways Mr. Vogel could not have known.

I keep thinking about that phrase. Unlocked something in me.

Every child carries locks inside them — interests and talents and ways of seeing that haven't been opened yet, that maybe haven't even been noticed yet. The right project, the right question, the right encouragement at the right moment can turn the key. The wrong response — or the missing one — can leave the door closed for years, sometimes for a lifetime.

As parents and grandparents, I think we hold a ring of keys. We see our children more closely than almost anyone else. We notice the small things — when they linger over something, when their eyes light up, when their hands won't stop moving until they finish what they're making. We see the locks before anyone else does, because we're the ones standing closest.

Teachers like Mr. Vogel see locks too, sometimes the very ones we see, sometimes others we miss. So do coaches, sometimes. And aunts and uncles. The world is full of people who occasionally hold the right key for our children, and we should be grateful for every one of them.

But the people closest to a child have the most keys, and the most chances to try them.

My husband saw himself in our granddaughter. And in that one quiet sentence — I see myself most in her — he was, without realizing it, handing our daughter a clue. This is the kind of child who needs a Mr. Vogel.

What lock are you watching in your child right now? And which key haven't you tried yet?