1 Mother 2 Another

Yesterday was a gorgeous day outside and
the girls had a rare day of sibling amity for the entire day; we
played outside after school then came home and continued in the
back yard, pausing only briefly for dinner, until bedtime. Part of
the time I simply lay on the grass and watched them laughing and
giggling together, marveling that sometimes I get it right –
at least, right enough to be able to give them this small measure
of happiness in each other.


Anyway, their joy was overflowing and the funny things kept pouring
out of their mouths. At one point, Maddie was demonstrating how
she’s working on her front flip: she laid out several floor
pillows in a row (yes, we take them outside sometimes, and really,
the word “no” just didn’t fit in
yesterday’s vocabulary), ran at the pillows, flipped in
mid-air, and landed on her head – yes, head – and
continued smoothly into a forward roll.


I watched her do this and said, “Honey, I am really glad you
chose to use the pillows; practicing this on the hard ground would
not be good.”

“Well,” I continued, trying
delicately to move her away from possible paralysis by landing on
her neck, “it would also be really bad if you landed on the
hard ground on your neck.”'


Maddie stopped and stared at me. “But Mom, I’m not
trying to land on my neck. That is not part of my technique. That
is not a technique I’m attempting to employ.”


I’m guessing the word “technique” came up in
school yesterday?


Then there was a moment when both girls were working on a difficult
stunt – trying to launch from the swingset’s swinging
trapeze to standing up on the swing and flying sideways, a move
they called “swing surfing”. Both girls were laughingly
trying to get Cora up on the trapeze and barely able to move
through their giggles. Maddie kept valiantly pushing on
Cora’s hiney, and finally said, “Cora, you’re
just too short!”


Cora snorted with laughter, then said good-naturedly, “Hey,
cut me some slack. I’m only five years old.”


Yeah, it was one of those awesome days.