Fleeting

We are walking. It’s a good way to get recovering kids out of the house, get some exercise, and not infect anyone else with the plague/whooping cough.

The Girl is walking along a low retaining wall, treasures gleaned from roadside bushes clenched in her hand. She crouches down, and just as she does the wind catches her dress and her golden hair and the purple jacaranda blooms in her hand and my breath catches in surprise.

She moves with such easy grace, and she is lovely. If I could paint I would paint that moment, and go back to it again and again.

That girl over there, that’s my daughter. She is 5. She is a middle child. She craves attention. She is never still and always plotting something. Her anger is quick if she doesn’t get her way, and lately she has taken to revenge, quietly destroying something someone else cares about as “payback”. (Where did she even learn this word?) I am often exhausted by her.

Her heart is wide and generous, she gives away her toys all the time. She is funny. She is thoughtful. She loves without reserve, and she expects to be loved the same.

It’s only a moment, and she’s down off the wall and we continue on our walk together. I wish she would go back, so I can pull out my camera and record it. Instead I struggle to string an image into words, to wrestle the ephemeral into some concrete form. But it is good for her to go forward. She has so much to grow out of and into.

I only pray that as she leaves the childish things behind she can keep her loveliness about her.