Adventure, no matter the weather

I was making my morning pilgrimage to the chickens, down the long single track path my boots have stamped through the snow.

Just one foot at a time.

I was thinking about these hens we raised from delicate, chirping babies under a grow light in our bathroom. Col loved to hold the chickens (“But oh, careful! Not around the neck honey.”) And Rose, a baby herself then, loved to tap their heads repeatedly with her open palm as if she was dribbling a very small basketball.

I was also thinking about the two children I left alone briefly in the house. Rose had been pushing her doll stroller around containing ducky and baby bear mingling inside of a newborn onesie. Col was wrapping “presents” for Rose in newspaper, announcing loudly “she’s really going to like this towel. And this tinkertoy. And this is a very special fork.”

I tossed last night’s wheat-free spaghetti to the chickens, bits of greenhouse basil still clinging to the rice-y ropes. I sprinkled the gritty crumbs from the bottom of a cereal bag onto the snow in front of their coop. And when the girls bobbed and clucked their way out of the coop it warmed my motherly heart, the way it does when my own children slurp a hearty vegetable soup, or crunch raw carrots under their pearly baby molars.

And then from the top of our stairs I heard Col’s voice: “Hi Mama!” And there were my babies thumping down the stairs in their pajamas and snow boots. They had thought to bring the doll stroller, but not mittens.

It was barely 8:00 AM, and the thermometer read:

But they were insistant that we all go on a walk, exploring.

 “Zero. Zero degrees.” I pleaded. But these children are not worriers, nor planners. They simply are doers, in the moment, and apparently the moment called for an adventure.

And it was cold, pore-tightening, breath-gasping, fingertip-numbing, nose-redenning, see-your-breath cold. But the kids were warmed by the spark of their own ideas, by their two pajamed feet crunching down the snow-packed street, and by the adventure of their own wild lives.

May you have a warm, fun, adventurous weekend, no matter the weather.