{childs.play}

daily mantra: play is the beginning of knowledge…unknown

Being an adult is over-rated.

Last weekend, I drove through the subdivision I grew up in until I was 18 years old and left home for college and marriage and life beyond myself. I was surprised to find that I didn’t recognize what I was seeing, and didn’t connect with it the way I thought I would. In 10 years the houses have all changed, the trees grown bigger, the families mostly new and models of what I image my parents were when they first moved in and started their lives there. I stopped at the dead end street, where my house was and looked in the back yard over the now sprawling weeping willows, and found a piece of my childhood waiting for me despite the metamorphosis. My best friend Amy and I would play out our endless summer vacations {because aren’t summer vacations like that when you are little…like separate years all in themselves} and play into the almost dark…until we couldn’t see in our hands in front of our faces anymore. One summer it was jump rope, the next it was bikes and roller racers, and one summer we built an epic tree fort in the field behind our houses. We talked about growing up, and how we would name our children after each other, and how we would always live next door so we could see one another every day. I am not sure why we thought being an adult was so cool…both of us watched our parents go to work every day, pay bills, and even struggle at times. Still…being an adult seemed amazing and even unattainable at that point for us, so we still visualized and planned our life 10 perfect years down the road.

A few years later, we were adults and the tree fort grew over, and nights were spent working at the local grocery store to pay for gas and car insurance.

Mikayla told me that she can’t wait to be 7 years old, like 7 would bring her to the upper echelon of supreme knowledge and responsibility and grace. Katie already tells every one she is 3, although I think its because she really *thinks* SHE IS 3.  I like it when they play games that have nothing to do with being an adult, although Mikki already has this fierce mothering instinct that makes her seem years above other kids her age, and even me sometimes. I made a fort in the back yard for them, and they both played until almost dark…and they played with their teddy bears and jump ropes and pet rocks…until the birds slowed their chirping, and the tree frogs sang their sweet lullaby from afar, and they could barely see their hands in front of their faces.