My children are almost grown now, participating in the adult world with work, school, and leaving behind summers full of imagination. But I still vividly remember one evening in spring...
I could hear the mower, my husband’s new toy, an 18.5 h.p. Yard Machine with a 48-inch cut. “Now I can really cut grass!” he exclaimed. My daughter and I watched as he went round and round. We were standing at the window, her hand slipped into mine and as I looked down into her little face; my heart took me back to the last days of summer. It was a beautiful evening, the sun dipped beyond the hill crickets began calling as the wind died away for the night. I smiled sadly and remembered a time that would never come again.
There I was, standing at the kitchen window, I could just see three little heads bobbing and waving through the grass. It was tall at eh end of summer and had turned shades of rust and gold. We didn’t mow our little bit of country, at least not beyond the area immediately surrounding the house.
“Aren’t you afraid of snakes?” wondered a friend.
“No, not really, there have never been rattlers on this side of our little creek. They live on the other side and don’t like to cross water, or bridges it seems.”
“Are you putting in a lawn?” the neighbors query.
I am sure to them it looked unkempt, but that was not true, God created it just as it was, a beautiful meadow. I loved our space.
Through the summer the field grew fragrant with wild flowers. The sky shimmered with butterflies and pollen on the warm summer days. But the real reason I loved this meadow were those three small heads.
I remember my childhood and the wonder of exploring and finding hidden worlds that grownups never saw. The forest, a mere quarter acre of trees below my grandfather’s house, that was to me, my cousins, and my sister a vast unexplored wilderness. There we set up small bowers to accommodate our vivid imaginations. One summer it was a hospital, nursing struggling kittens, we received more scratches than we were able to heal. Other years it became a pioneer village complete with stores, blacksmith shops, and houses.
We lived net to a forest, but it was adult sized and not a safe place for small adventurers to explore. But that summer the wonderful accident of the great unknown grew wild all around us. We were unable to cut the whole of our acre parcel, and I settled for the fifty feet of area immediately surrounding the house. Beyond that undefined space the valley grew as it always had. There my children found new games to play. At first they were content to hide until someone noticed that they were gone. But as the giggles of hidden children, waiting to be found, could be heard in the kitchen where I prepared their lunch, they were able to enjoy their game until I called them into the house to wash for their meal.
Soon, they grew tired of merely hiding, and childhood’s wonderful imagination took over. Just as years before, we had played, they grew whole houses. Blankets became rugs, tables were bits of wood and pretend food and dishes were fashioned from the plant life all around them.
Finally as the sun sank beyond the forest covered hill, those three were on another mission. Then they were busy making beautiful jewelry to be proudly shown off at the supper table. Their small arms had been extended to receive their treasured piece of masking tape, and off they went, tape sticky side out, as they searched for just the right flower, the perfect leaf and the small pinecone that would complete the fragrant bracelet.
They soon came back to my world, a world full of dirty dishes, rooms that needed dusting and the million other details that make up the inside world of our home, but they came bearing intricately created gifts. For that one quiet moment, I watched the heads moving along, listened to the singing voices, calling and exclaiming over new found treasures , and knew that soon they would leave this world of fascination and see, as adults do, only the grass that needs to be mowed.
Years have come and gone, spring arrived and only the memory remains. Old grass needs cut to allow the new to grow, just as childhood makes way for the adult world. But that night as the first star began t o twinkle and my husband turned to ward the house with glee, “This machine works great!” he called. We waved back from the window, nodding and smiling. A small hand still gripped mine as my daughter watched him turn the corner. She looked up and sighed, “Mommy, now where will we play?”
Looking back all these years later, I smile and finally have an answer, “Honey, you have the whole world.”
