Come follow, follow, follow....

Yesterday, after a long day that included driving through a neighborhood that was particularly hard hit by the devastating floods (mentioned a few posts ago) and not being able to do anything about it, I felt depressed and a little hopeless. Sodie, Naya, and Mado move through these recent days in a cloud of urgent tension as they work to complete the obligations of the ending school year. We dragged ourselves from the family car and headed indoors, towards an evening of certain drudgery. My gloomy eye was distracted by Toucie as she flounced off into the backyard, wearing the rose-tinted glasses that seem to come standard with most 5 year-olds. I left my belongings in the car, grabbed my camera, and followed her....

The fields all around our home are teeming with buttercups.

Hiding among the buttercups are hundreds of "Indian Strawberries"...completely inedible, but beautiful to look at....Toucie gathered a few and put them in her pocket.

Out where the horses have cropped the grass short, she found a small stand of daisies. She picked one for herself and one for me, whispering, "They smell like feet." in a reverent hush as she tucked it behind my ear.

The odor of the daisy must have prompted her to seek balance, for she sprinted across the pasture to the fence where honeysuckle runs rampant. I breathed in deeply of the rich perfume as I caught up with her. Ah...this is a scent that instantly brings to my mind a lifetime of clear memories of springtime bliss. Just as the scent of damp, fallen leaves or raw pumpkin pulp can summon up autumn recollections and pine sap or gingerbread aromas bring winter thoughts to mind, honeysuckle is a hallmark of spring to me.

There must be true medicinal qualities in the combined essence of daisy and honeysuckle. After sipping the nectar of the few blossoms she plucked for me, the heavy feeling I'd been carrying all day began to give way to a childlike lightness of heart.

As Toucie made the rounds to what were obviously special spots in our yard that brought her joy, the contagion of it all finally overtook me. My 5 year-old was an accidental therapist...here is some of the beauty that she lead me to witness that day:

Here is a girl who knows when to take a break from the drudgery and escape into nature.We found Mado in the backyard. She has the magical gift of being able to call forth a four-leaf-clover from any clover patch...open virtually any book in our home and you will probably find a four-leaf-clover pressed inside - some of them many years old.

Look...she found another before I'd even turned away...she makes my heart happy.

Life is going on, ever forward, flowering, fruiting, bursting with radiance.

Its good to look around yourself each day and recognize this affirmation: the world is a place of beauty. It is good to surround yourself with people who can give you a nudge on those days that you forget to look around.