I picked you up and held you awhile, as I like to do.  It brings us face-to-face, encouraging an immediacy that makes it easier to talk.  I asked if you thought you’d play baseball or softball, explaining how softball is like baseball but the ball is bigger. You replied…

and softer… and girls play it

I said, maybe you’ll be a swimmer. or a soccer player… you said

I will be a swimming coach

Watching your brother play baseball on a bright Saturday afternoon in Durham, you then chose the top bleacher, which was six feet or so off the ground.

You were squirmy, uninterested in staying still, so on a whim, I held onto your hands and gently let you down to the ground from the high end.

You liked this.

Instead of climbing back up the aluminum bleachers from the lowest rung, you climbed underneath the open bleachers from the back side where I had lowered you.

It wasn’t long before you said

do that again!

with a gleam in your eye.

Back on the top bleacher you figured out a way to get down again by yourself by climbing underneath, placing your sneakered feet onto the aluminum support struts. Up and down you went, two or three times.

Having mastered this, you asked:

Papa can we go to the playground?

 

We ran across the green field to the brightly colored extravaganza system of slides, walkways, jungle gyms, climbing walls, chimes, bridges and ladders that make up today’s playgrounds.  Today’s playgrounds are works of art.

You challenged me to a race:

climb the ladder and I’ll go up the stairs

Hey, that’s not exactly fair.  I raced after you across the bridge, but you were already there, taunting me:

I beat you!

It was no contest.  You’re a fearless mountain goat girl!