Touch The Sky

“I think that tree is touching the sky,” she yelled on our evening walk around the block.

She was wearing a white princess dress with tulle and rhinestones, topped off with a faux fur vest. Drips from her purple popsicle ran down the front of her dress and covered her cheeks. She stopped every few feet to smell a flower or point out a beautiful color.

“It’s like a forest,” she said as she walked under the same towering Maple tree as it curved over the sidewalk.

I tried to watch from her perspective as she raced ahead of us to sniff another flower. She is that much closer to the blooming tulips and lilacs. And the budding trees just seem that much taller. Plus, she doesn’t have my thirty plus years of taking creation for granted.

At the risk of sounding dramatic, Spring really is a magical time. The sky looks bluer and the sun streaming in through the windows and between tree branches makes everything glow. Possibilities are available to us around every corner.

It has been a real relief to me recently to see the world through her eyes. It helps me release the pressure of work and life. It reminds me of what I value most in life. Adult life will always pull us in a million different directions, if we let it. It’s a risky balance to strike and, of course, it changes depending on the day. Work is important, yes, but it is not always as urgent as others might want it to be. I find myself reacting less these days to accomplish tasks on other people’s timelines and to-do lists. I don’t have to get swept up into the chaos of others (My life has enough of its own, thank you very much). It’s not my emergency, my firefighter/paramedic husband is fond of saying.

There will always be more work, another project that has to be done right now, but this slow walk around the block with my almost four-year old will not always hold such magic.