When Katie, a second grader, walked across the street this morning she was so excited to show me the new little bauble she'd recently hung on her backpack. It was a tiny pink tennis shoe that lights up. I could just feel her joy as she showed me and relished this simple little pleasure in her 7 yr. old world.
I've been writing my memories down recently, so I think when Katie showed me her trinket, I was prompted to remember how fun it is to be a little girl. The happiness and pleasure in the simple things like running for no reason, swinging as high as you can while singing every song you can think of, pretending to cook and keep house in a mansion that is actually a small area of dirt and bushes, relishing the honor of cleaning erasers for the teacher by whapping them on a tree outside, chasing and being chased by the boys, waking up in the car to the sound of a parent saying, "home again, home again, jiggity jog!", and just simply growing and learning how the world works so somewhere in the impossibly distant future you can be whatever you want to be!
I love having a job where on a daily basis I can be reminded that life is really just about simple pleasures and finding joy in a tiny little shoe that lights up!
