Tree Climbing Season

This one doesn't really have anything to do with coffee. Just some idle musing between sips...

Springtime. When my older daughter was 1, spring was Doodlebug-Picking Season. She must have been just the right height, toddling on those newly minted legs, to spot the roly-poly bugs wherever we went. She'd crouch in the rock garden outside our apartment door and pick one out from between the rocks, then wait patiently for the rolled-up doodlebug in the palm of her hand to feel safe enough to uncurl and explore, its teeny legs traversing her hand and her chubby fingers, its antennae waggling this way and that. How many times was I too impatient to stop and gaze with her? How many doodlebugs did I make her put back in the rock garden before going inside?

When she was 3, spring was Acorn Collecting Season. Anywhere she walked, she'd stop to pick up handfuls of acorns. We'd find acorns in her pockets when running the wash. We'd get to the car, and she'd show me the four or five acorns she had gathered on the way from the front door. She wanted me to keep the acorns in the front seat until we got wherever we were going, but would usually forget about them by the time we got out of the car. Rather than have the front seat turned into a granary, the repository of the acorns, I usually tossed them out into some bushes the first chance I got. And whenever I picked her up from daycare, she'd give me a few acorns she had collected on the playground that afternoon. "I got these for you, Daddy!" If I had kept all of the acorns she'd given me, I'd have a barrel full of them now.

Now she's 10, and I realized yesterday that this spring marks Tree Climbing Season. On the walk home from school, she eyeballs every tree in every front yard, calculating the reach to the first branch, scrutinizing the strength and thickness of the branches above, declaring whether each tree is a good climbing tree or not. When we go to the park, she runs past the playground equipment and heads straight for the trees. And, for now, she still looks to me to be the keeper of the trees. Not that I can take the trees home as I could with acorns or doodlebugs, but I can help hold the moments for her. "Look, Daddy, look how high I got!" And I think I finally learned not to throw these back.