The prestige of childhood:

To stand atop that small hill, grass to your knees, sun high above, wind across your cheeks, arms raised, palms high, face turned upwards, smile wide as you scream, "I am king! King of the world!"

The cows chew their cud. You are eight years old.

You take off, back home. Run, run quickly, then, down that small hill. Your feet pound into the dirt and dried manure and your arms pump at your sides. It is harder to breathe the quicker you run, and your lungs tighten against your ribcage and they beg for more air. You do not grant it. Keep running! Watch for the bent sticks that threaten your speed. Use your hands to brush the tall grass aside. You smell dirt. You smell stagnant water. You breathe through your nose and you can smell cows, tree bark, wildflowers, dandelions, entire root systems.

Hell, you can even smell the sunlight pour across the meadows.

Run wild, down the hill. And your legs might buckle with your momentum. You might jump to regain composure or you may fall, landing hard into a menagerie of an unkempt sanctuary of termites, lady bugs, snakes, wood ticks, inch worms, and one praying mantis.

And you stay awhile, examining this other world.

You bring your knees to your chest and hold your legs close and watch a rolly polly bug turned into a tight, indestructible ball when you prod it. The lady bug has four spots. The worm does not notice you as it burrows in and out of the dirt. A mosquito is on your arm. You slap it. It bursts.

It is damp here in this world, near the roots, where plants hold their moisture. The ground is still so wet despite the sunny day. You run your hand up a long stem of grass and pull the seeds from its top. They are light in your palm. You crunch them. Roll them between both your palms. Dust them away from your hands.

You're getting too itchy sitting here. It is time to leave.

You rise, once again king of this world.

You dust your butt, stretch, and run.

You begin to run just like before. Pounding the ground with your feet. Boxing the air with your fists. Breathing hard. Snot running down your nose.

Push aside the tall grass.

Sink your feet.

Pound.

Breathe, king, breathe.

Remember to read Flannery O'Connor.

And please, do not forget the prestige of childhood.
Perhaps it is our saving grace.

Rise

To wake up at 6:30 and throw a sweatshirt around my shoulders, walk from my suite to the main house, to arrive at the door to see the cat wanting in or wanting out, wanting to be fed, wanting to be petted, to go turn on every light I turned off last night at 11:00, get the papers from outside the huge wooden front door (they rest on the expanse of tiled marble) and then to turn on the music for breakfast, check the math on the receipts, preheat the oven, cut the fruit, assemble the fruit bowls, make whipped cream, adding orange zest to it because we're having orange french toast, to line the sausages up one after the other, but don't forget to line the pan with tin foil and even PAM if you feel up to it - and then to brew the coffee, heat the kettles, pour the coffee, pour the hot water, set them on the bar, greet the early risers, wait for the sleepers, and begin to serve the breakfast.

To do all this means that afterward I can cross back over to our suite, open the door to a darkened living room, and go to the cupboard for the food.

I can open the bag of food and without a doubt, I will hear whining and crying from the next room. Smokey's awake! The day begins! I feed his bowl and open his kennel. He runs straight for the food. I wake Matthew and sing, "Good morning to yooooou" and he mutters and rolls away from my face.

I go back to the small kitchenette and make coffee, sit here, write this.

I interrupt myself to take the dog outside, come back in, sit back down, and write.

We will live at the Inn only a few more weeks of slow season, and then we will move back home. It has taken over a week, but I am finally beginning to feel at home here, where my husband and my dog sleep soundly, where I have rediscovered my other love, this love.

Inspired by T. Walsh

Today I took my puppy and went for a drive.

It's been abnormally cold here; mere thirties and forties on the scale, which can send folks into tizzies when they travel from the Northeast on vacation to escape the cold.

However, I've welcomed the reprieve from typical seasonal weather. Of course, I've had a fair share of complaints escape my lips. My hands have become dry and cracked, and my lips are in the same decline. My nose runs all hours of the night and, to counteract its running, I've begun sleeping on my back. This means my mouth hangs open as I snore my dreams away. And then, of course, there is the bit about swinging open my front door to a sudden faceful of boasting windchill. And, oh yes, the layers that are required just to take the dear puppy out at a brisk 3:30 a.m.

But truth be told, I have welcomed this weather.

And yet,

In the car today, Charleston's weather was a different story.

Today is the first sunny day for a few now, with the rain singing down on our little city for just a bit too long. But today, the sun laughed through cracks in my bedroom blinds, and all-out guffawed when I opened the front door. Smokey Robinson noticed it, too. He looked at me before crouching to pee as if to ask, "Can we stay out and play?" Of course, I obliged.

After running around the circular driveway for three and a half times, I scooped little Smokey up and decided to take him with me for some errands.

Thus began my drive along water-logged roads and down muddied childhood memories of springtime.

The beauties of spring are the nuances of it; the mud, the excess of water, the buds that never open, the birds that warble off-key. It's the sun that shines almost too brightly, the sky that rests into that certain shade of blue, the rich colors that emerge, and the smell of it. There is that smell of spring. It is pure earth, that smell, and it reminds me of how fertile and rich a place we live. That smell is, I know, the reason for the budding, the catalyst for the Jasmine's perfume. It is heavy with moisture. It is laden with dirt, and grit, and grime. It is divine.

And today, there were small flirtations of it after I drove by supermarkets, chain restaurants, and gas stations. The smell subtly came and went through my open window. It was as if it meant to beckon me back to childhood, meant to remind me about what it means to spend time outside in the spring.

Don't forget what it's like to find a spider web in the dew, it told me.

Remember to look at the mud when you walk by it.

Breathe through your nose, it said.

Remember that life's seasons continue.

And I breathed, and I knew what it was to re-new.