Carpa Diem

Apr 22, 2008

When I woke up yesterday morning, I tripped over the trail of snow suits, pants, toques, gloves hats etc….Did I not clean this last night? Am I losing my mind? Grrrrrr……..I holler at the kids. “Come get your snow gear!!!” “Please put them away!!!” so it goes. And that part of the morning long forgotten.

Looking through the fridge to see what to cook for lunch, I find that the loaf of bread I thought I had was gone. Hmmmmm….someone must have been really hungry.

When we sat down to eat supper, Mona piped up and said, “Maya was singing ‘Feed the Birds’ this morning!” “Oh really? that’s nice.” My girls love “Mary Poppins”. “Feed the birds, tuppence a bag….” It’s not a big surprise that they were singing the song. They usually sing something all day long. Finally the story comes out. We’ve been having a crazy April blizzard the last few days. We’ve been worried about tulips and birds. We are getting tons of robins in our backyard eating the old crabapples. Girls decided that they would do their part in helping the poor birds. So, at dawn they got themselves dressed into snow gear with a bag of bread in their hands. They scattered the bread crumbs all over the yard as they sang, “tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag…” I wish I had a video camera for that moment. but I can just imagine….bread pieces flying in the air with heart-felt, off-key rendition of “Feed the Birds”. It doesn’t get better than this.

Somedays I wonder where along the way I lost this kind of child-like wonder and excitement for life around me. The old “Mr. Banks” from Mary Poppins. I feel like him somedays. If the girls had asked me if they could feed the bread to the birds, I probably would have said ‘no’ because I needed it for lunch and it’s way to cold to go out to get more groceries…Remember how Mr. Banks wanted Michael to put the tuppence in the bank account instead of ‘wasting it’ on bread crumbs to feed the birds? I watch the movie and think, ‘what an old grump!’ But here I am not that far from him.

I hope I can nurture and protect the innocence and wonder the girls have. I love that. I remember the day when girls came running into the house with this delightful panic look on their faces….”MOM MOM MOM!!!!! there is a squirrel living in our tree!!!!!” They never saw him. “How do you know?” I asked suspiciously. They showed me a peanut they found on the sidewalk. “That’s wonderful! what should we name him?”