i took the divine to swing at the park yesterday evening. while i was pushing her, she held her hands up high and told me she was going to catch the sky. it was a precious moment of childhood innocence . . . when everything that surrounds you is new and amazing and, most of all, possible.

i wonder at what age exactly we learn that we can't catch the sky. i wish that i could protect her from the world and from reality, to allow her to always think that she can catch the sky someday by just holding her hands up and saying it's so . . . but as her mother, that isn't my job. my job is to give her the tools she needs to deal with the world in a healthy, functional manner someday. having said that, i think that children today grow up way too fast and i have made a commitment to prolong the divine's childhood innocence as long as reasonable . . . just things like we don't watch tv often; in fact, i rarely turn it on anymore and not exposing her to adult concepts at an early age, etc. but slowly over the next eighteen years, she'll learn to stand on her own two feet in the world, she'll make decisions about her own career and her own family and her own life and someday she'll learn that you can't catch the sky . . . but maybe she'll learn to remember the importance of wanting to catch it and once believing that you could . . . and maybe that's also my job as her mother. it's amazing how much those tiny little creatures teach you while you're trying to teach them.

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