treasures, surprises: the makings of a childhood

It’s been too rainy to be outside most days this week.

So when the sun finally came shining through,

the kids did not find it a difficult task to convince me to let them play outside.

Despite the fact that we all knew

(although none of us spoke of it)

that outside play would probably end in mud and mess and varying degrees of wet and/or ruined shoes and clothes.

And it was a messy adventure.

And a Keen shoe is M.I.A.

And the path in front of our house is covered in crumpled wet clothes that were required to be shed pre-entry into our home.

And the area beside the stream and the playground has been named Mud Man Island.

But four kids played outside together for hours.

They forgot how chilly they were and their morning of petty disagreements

and thought only of building and laughing and jumping.

And creating.

A dam out of rocks and sticks.

A fort from fallen logs and branches.

A pirate’s treasure from whatever the woods and the stream produced.

At one point,

watching from the window,

Kevin and I saw London and Bergen taking turns leaping across the stream.

And then we saw them abandon the idea of

jumping across the water

and witnessed them embrace the idea of

splashing into the water.

We were both about to step outside and exercise our parental wisdom.

But we did not.

Instead,

we quietly observed

the creation of a memory.

The building of a childhood.

The bonds of a brother and a sister

exploring water and dirt and life and cold and wet and joy

at the same time.

That’s actually what we want to be about here.

And while we stood at our kitchen window and

loved our children and soaked up the peaceful idealism we were seeing,

the kids called to us to come look at the long lost pirate booty they had unearthed.

Last fall, after our trip to Tybee Island, the kids brought home a souvenir lobster.

It was one of those weird little rubbery ones that you place in water and watch it increase to fifty times its size.

We placed it a huge jar, set it on the table and let it grow to mammoth proportions.

And it really did expand.

Until it almost burst its rubbery-ness

and until I could no longer stand to see its peel-y, creepy red/orange self in our kitchen.

Then we let the kids “release” it into the stream to see what would happen.

See where this is going?

That was around September some time – last year.

And suddenly, some seven months later, old Mr. Creeper Lobster appears at the other end of our stream.

So I guess we all got what we wanted.

A little sunshine.

Some outside play.

Sibling bonding.

Memory building.

And a lost treasure found.