A found robin egg. A leaf plucked from a branch they couldn't reach last year. A proud smile riding a bike on two wheels.
Avid explorers of the mundane, the mud--the incredible when examined through the lens of eight and five. Every day discovers a new skill and invents a new game.
Top of the lung screaming and laughing, running full-tilt in the breeze, bare feet on spring grass, newly cut. The girls orbit around us in impromptu firefly shapes, lighting parts of the yard as they go by.
These are things that bind our childhoods, mine and the girls'. A spring day in Oxford for me was in a marsh, building trails and forts til sundown. Or a bike ride to Doc's Quick Shop or Bringmans or the park. Skipping pieces of oyster shells on the Tred Avon.
It's funny being now the one who cuts the grass and warns for cars, while still remembering clearly my own Huffy, Big Wheel, tree climbing rumpus days.
Raising kids where I grew up, I think about them smelling the same smells, shaded by the same trees, ankle deep in the same water, but all different for how they see it and all new now, because it is.
The girls run over yelling a name I've only had for a few years, hands cupped around a cracked blue robin's egg and I cut the mower off to listen to their story and what it is and what they'll do with it and I know, in that moment, why I am alive.
2 comments:
MV, Nice thoughts! Im going through the same things, only with boys of 5 and 11. I could replace some of your sensory observations with things like, the crack of a bat, or the sting of a ball into a well worn baseball glove. Here's to you and I experiencing those things with our children while so many fathers are doing whatever while their boys and girls are on the couch playing video games! we are truly living while life passes so many by! later, Bards
Right on, Stephen. I dig that baseball is such a part of the lives of your crew, man. I've had baseball fever this spring, despite the two nearest teams being on the snide.
And I am right with you on the off the couch engaged parenting. Hope to catch up with you soon, sir!
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