By Chelene Salzwedel
Listening to my daughters at play is always an adventure! The things that they come up with put my adult imagination to shame, and they dream them up on the spot! No brief, no preset framework, just free-spirited imagination.
In the car on the way to school this morning my nearly 4-year old daughter was asking me to repeat after her (just the way her mommy or her teacher would) and I couldn’t keep up! Her sentences tie my tongue but roll off hers like syrup. She’s uninhibited, and I love it.
As often as I can I like to sneak a glance at them when they don’t know I’m watching and I’ll catch my 2-year old being the “baby” and calling her big sister “mama”, being tenderly cared for with unlimited resources. Facecloths become blankies, tea sets become medicine, and “be careful of…” lists are recited aplenty – the world is a BIG place and through the eyes of our girls it’s fascinating, irresistible, an adventure and full of life!
Do we remember the times in our lives when we were little and life was free and raw – we could feel things, taste explosions happened regularly in our mouths, we could see as far as the hills and hear the songs in cities far off… life was boundless to us and excitement was the order of the day, every day!
That JOY is true. You can’t fake it – but you can unlearn it. Let’s choose to be captivated by each new day again!