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Turning cartwheels on carpets of grass
Finding dragons in the clouds
Digging holes in search of worms
Climbing rocks in the woods
Standing still with arms outstretched
Waiting for birds to take the seed
Playing with dominos made from rocks
Drawing fairies on sidewalks
Swinging in hammocks hanging from trees
This is the Spring of a child
Unless there’s some huge spring snowstorm, today was most definitely the last day of sledding in the woods. The snow melted as we walked upon it, and our favorite sledding hill is really mostly slush.
I'm feeling the late-February doldrums. It's the time of year when I just wish summer would hurry up and show her warm and sunny face. But I know even though the weather forecast shows the temps will mostly be above freezing the next 7-10 days, Old Man Winter won’t give up so easily. He blows his icy breath as late into the year as he possibly can. As the sun stays longer in the sky, he loosens his grasp just a bit, but never really, truly lets go.
If I’ve learned anything over the last year, it’s that these woods of ours are our happy place when the doldrums start to sink in. So today we grabbed our hats and coats, found the thinner snow pants tucked away for these late winter days, and headed to the woods with the sled in tow.
I walk down the stairs to find a huge block city spanning the length of the living room floor. My eyes scan the room and I notice a bowl on the counter containing just a splash of milk and a few leftover O’s, the spoon resting gently on the edge. Cereal crumbs scatter the counter and floor, and an open container sits in the middle of the counter. Glimpses of the early morning breakfast that happens before I wake up.
Some people dream of breakfast in bed. I dream of someone else taking care of breakfast while I’m left alone. Under the warmth of my blankets, with a notebook and a pen.
A breakfast of words, if you will. I crave solitude first thing in the morning. A few moments to collect myself and really prepare my heart for the day to come.
Perhaps one of the best decisions I’ve made as a parent so far was rearranging the kitchen to put bowls in a waist-high drawer, and milk in a child-size pitcher on the lowest shelf in the fridge. As preschoolers they learned they could wake up and make themselves a bowl of cereal, giving me another hour or so of lazy mornings in bed.
It’s just one way I strive to give them wings—empowerment with equipping attached.
“Yes you can do this!” this small action says. But it doesn’t stop with those words of encouragement. It goes a step further. ”And we’ll change some things in our house to make it so you can be successful with very little effort.”
Empowerment alone can be crippling. Giving someone the freedom and encouragement to do something for themselves can sometimes feel like too great a responsibility to bear. But when we make small changes to really help people achieve the thing we’ve given them the freedom to do … only then does freedom have real power to grow wings and soar.
This post is written in response to prompts from 40 Days of Writing the Everyday with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs.
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