A Green Wish

I was reading Jude a new book we got recently from the library. It's about a woodcutter who finds a fairy in the forest. He saves this fairy from a hawk that intends to eat him. So, in return, the fairy gives the woodcutter a gift: one wish.

When we got to this point in the story, I stopped to ask Jude the obvious, just to see what he would come up with:

If you had just one wish in the whole world, what would you wish for?

And he thought about it for a while and said, with a confident smile,

I would wish that all the things in my neighborhood were green.

What a nice, simple, sweet little boy wish. But somehow profound too. I really feel almost jealous of him sometimes, of that amazingly creative little mind he has. I feel like it really does get lost as the years go by. The enjoyment of simple things. And the power of the imagination. I'm just so grateful to have him reminding me of these things. How wonderful it would be if everything in our neighborhood was green.