Daughters and Suns



From where I sit...

From where I sit the weather is fine. Cool, damp on the ground from weeks of coastal rain, branches torn from trees following new year wind storms, the moisture permanently in the air here hanging differently with the arrival of a March sun.

From where I sit the armrests are crowded, covered with rocks from the driveway's edge, first-stage Inukshuk-style leavings showing whoever comes upon them that people were here. Little people in this case. Each rock placed there by a 3 year old and a 6 year old for no other reason than because........it was fun.

From where I sit fun is relative. Relative to the amount of fresh, indigenous, outside air being pushed through your lungs and pumped into your heart. Start 'em young on the good stuff.....be it the back forty, the back four or the back window......crank open the latch and breathe in the wind blowin' through, the sun shining in, the rain pounding down, the fog rolling in, the snow falling softly or whirling crazily.  Get addicted to a daily dose of fresh air no matter the weather.

Seein' it in the sun to be so... 

Sunshine and a garden hose. Kinda like buckets and shovels, perfectly sharpened pencils and connect-the-dots, an untouched sheet of bubble wrap. You can't steer clear of it, see no need to ignore the impulse to uncoil a few feet of its snakey-green shape, choose from the tuthree favorites; jet, cone, shower.....before hittin' pay dirt with 'mist' and see the rays of the sun shining through a Bigleaf maple tree.

The camera misses the rainbows the kids discover they can make, I miss that perfect parenting magazine feature  shot of giggly, euphoric children dancing in the grass with nature. One garden hose between two kids is no hands-free, one eye on a screen. kinda mama bear task. So the rainbows are seen yet captured only in my memory where they will hover precariously I the shadow of  the shots I DID get.

The rainbow seen in the sun to be so.

Hauled away day....

My little girl plays in the rocks with her brother's Tonka truck....actually that truck is her big, BIG brother's truck so that makes that thing almost 20 years old.....and I hear her making noises to match the play. No vroom-vroom-vroom like her brothers before her but just as cute.

"Now YOU go here....and you go HERE",she tells each rock placed into the truck bucket from the wicker basket she's used to collect them.
Those rocks have feelings I guess and the truck's movements need no soundtrack apparently. It's all about dialogue with this girl. I respect that and wonder if I should be concerned she's not playing with her dollhouse or pretty pink plastic pony. The gender specific thought process tarnishing what should be simple joy at her act of merely playing.

The sun shines on her little quarry and it occurs to me there's no rock quarry Foreman Barbie. What up with THAT? Although Barbie would seriously need to think about bulking up some. In her current form she might snap like a twig with what the average kick-ass girl would put her through  in the backyard.

Sunshine,garden hoses, rocks, Barbie and Tonka trucks.
From where I sit all seems well.