I just browsed through some of our old pictures, and I found a series I'd saved under "Merry Wander." Merry, my oldest, is one of those children whom I've often seen walk away, not because she's angry or doesn't love home, but because she's brave and independent. The first day of school she set her jaw and boarded the bus just as she used to steel herself for a ride on the merry-go-round as a toddler. As the painted horses bobbed up and down to the cheery music, she'd scowl in concentration. Once when I was pushing her on the swing, she said in a musing sort of way: "I recognize that I'm having fun."
Dear Merry, wandering about not because she's lost but because she's determined to experience the next adventure, whether that means leaving home without a second glance or hunkering over a book she's reading, barely glancing up for a kiss before bed.
I looked at those pictures of her wandering into the snow, across the rocks in Sedona, down into the desert scrub, and I felt this stirring every parent feels, a mixture of pride and a little sadness at the water-gush of time: you can't cup it in your hands; it just rushes out, cold and clear, astonishes you, and then passes on through your fingers, and slips away. Of course there's always more coming, and that keeps me so busy and engaged that I have very little time for sadness.
And today is so bright and warm, a fuzzy gift in my hands, that I think a merry sort of wander may be called for. Over the river, then, through the woods!
