Last Walk with Lucy

Our family is on the brink of the newest adventure---our fourth child will be born on Wednesday!  It's Memorial Day, and Lucy and I took advantage of the peaceful morning to talk a long walk together around the neighborhood pond. 

The twill of the red-winged blackbird (and the fact that its wings show half a rainbow) did not go unnoticed by 5 year old Lucy.  She walked, picking up pieces of broken tar and leaves.  She noticed worms, wiggling or dead.  She stopped to observe a butterfly and then sadly remarked that since it was wounded, it might be eaten by a bird. 

For a block, she followed the lines created in tar to repair the broken sidewalk as they curved back and forth, side to side. 

A walk with Lucy isn't really fast paced.

Near the end of our walk, Lucy asked me if she could walk home alone.  We were still quite a ways from home.  "Why not?" she asked.  "I am a kindergartener!"  (She just graduated from preschool this week.)

As our neighborhood park came into view, she asked again and I said yes.  Look both ways before you cross the road.

And off she went.  Lucy was running.  Every so often, she'd glance back to see where I was, and then hurry along as fast as she could toward home.

I realized, in this season of new beginnings and graduation and spring, that Lucy was not running away from me.  She was running to be herself, to be independent, to be free.

Isn't that the way it's supposed to be.