Little Friend roams the lawn fringing the preschool parking lot with a band of wild cohorts. Children with mud-fringed pants legs, hair escaping riotously from pig tails, backpacks flinging about like slingshots. The mothers stand on the outskirts of the fray, adult eyes weary from tracking the fizz-bang courses of children let loose. Then, Little Friend detaches herself from the pack, eyes glassy with joy, hand extended toward me.
“Mama! It’s Narnia,” she breathes, gesturing to the thicket of bushes behind her. “Come on, come see!”
She skips three steps away, then comes back two to make sure I’m following her into this enchanted world of children.
Who can turn down that welcome?
So I follow her through the winding path, too grown up to pass easily between branches, too grown up to extinguish thoughts like, “Wow, this is really tearing up the mulch.”
Little One, tucked into a sling against my side, fearlessly bats aside leaves that brush her face as we journey to a world of fauns and lions and little girls and boys who will be queens and kings.
Like the little boys and girls who grow up to be too big to return to Narnia, I wonder when I will no longer be welcome in this wonderland (probably soon, if I keep up my worries about mulch rather than white witches). But I’m ever so grateful that Little Friend and now Little One have journeyed to this land that was so beloved to me in my childhood.
May the wardrobe doors always open in welcome to them.
This post is part of Lisa Jo Baker’s Five Minute Fridays where anyone can share a post written in five minutes of free-form thought with no pressure of perfection or editing. This month I’m also tackling The Nester’s challenge to write a post a day. I’m working toward 31 Days of Quote to Inspire.
Lovely. I love the perspective and the reminder that nothing is more important that being a part of our children’s lives.
Just this… “Like the little boys and girls who grow up to be too big to return to Narnia, I wonder when I will no longer be welcome in this wonderland” I think this every day. A gift, our children, grown way too fast, I pray I always return to Narnia, and I am welcomed. Excellent post!
Never to big or to old, Not even when they need to venture without you by their side for a while.
I really like this :). You had an awesome way of making the topic into a cool story (albeit a real one). Ill have to check out your 31 days series. Im also on board with a 31 days series of no more procrastinating. So far its been really good for me.
Amanda.