In To The Woods

Saturday was beautiful. It was warm, on the cusp of hot in the sunshine. On days like that, it’s not okay to stay inside watching the world pass you by from the window. It’s important to grab these moments with both hands and throw yourselves in to the day with open hearts and open eyes. It’s important to be a part of it.

Winter is full of days which are spent counting down to the blissful summer ones. The waiting is a long, boring, hard road… but when we finally get what we want, we don’t always appreciate it.

On Saturday, me and mine appreciated it.

The sun shone early. I opened my eyes to it beating through my window and it instantly uplifted me, it instantly made me happy…and I started counting.

I counted down the seconds for my sister and her bunch to arrive so that we could go walking, into the woods.

Away from the shops, away from people, away from white noise, lists, schedules and time.

We walked into a woodland clearing and the light flickered over my new baby niece’s face as she slept like an angel.

The Cousins explored and noticed things.

Ellenah busied herself, picking flowers. She didn’t stick to the path, she mapped out her own route to follow and like a little honey bee, she bounced between foliage, collecting her happy thoughts as well as the beautiful wild flowers that grew there. She clustered them up into the palms of her sweaty little hands like she had seen them all for the first time.

My Nephew looked upon the shallow stream where we could once cross by a man-made bridge, a dam… He tried to formulate a plan to put it back.

My two shuffled dangerously close to the edge together. They held each other, tested their boundaries, supported each other, strengthened each other…and didn’t let each other fall, they didn’t let each other go.

My free-spirited Niece threw caution to the wind and much like her mama, no doubt told herself ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’… with faith and trust in herself and her senses, she was in her perfect playground.

With the freedom to roam, climb and run, my usually sensitive boy picked up a stick and some confidence with it, to lead his own way as he weaved through the paths. He was grubby, sweaty and he smelt pretty clammy but he looked so free, so alive, so light…like he could almost fly through the trees.

And, us mama’s… we watched our children be like we used to be as children. We watched them feel the same way as we once did. We watched them connect to something pretty special. The world. And, it mattered to us. It mattered that we got to be with our children. Completely. They didn’t need to wait for us to stop juggling life around and it felt really nice.

We absolutely stole the sunshine, we took it for ourselves, for our moment to exist, simply.

Away from normal, the counting, the hoping…the waiting.

And it was wonderful!

With Love, Ria x