when I fly a kite

"When I fly a kite, I feel like a kite."  So said little Finn, when he was begging to go outside on a windy windy day and fly his kite. We've had many such windy windy days lately, and he's right about feeling like a kite. I got to hold his for a while when he wanted to slide, and holding this swooping, darting piece of paper, the line taut with all the power of the wind, I felt powerful and strong, as if I was the one dancing high above the ground.  It made me think of Mary Oliver's line about floating a little above this difficult world (from The Ponds, and it's worth reading the whole thing) and I thought about how I want that for Finn, and for Willa. I want them mostly to not be afraid of the muck and mud, to get into the nitty gritty of reality and disappointment and hard things, but also to have ways to soar above it, dazzled by beauty and love and grace. How well this season of Lent embodies this, sliding, as we do, from mud season into spring, from desolation to resurrection.

We've learned that the only way to have any sort of an outdoors life here is to wholeheartedly embrace mud. So we've assembled wardrobes for it, bearing in mind that old saying "there's no bad weather, only bad clothing," and we get out in it as often as we can, stomping, playing, running, sliding, falling down, and occasionally, even soaring.