Starry-Eyed and Silly

People love to applaud the idea of maintaining a "childlike perspective." Lately, it has been upheld as a way to improve your health, increase morale in the workplace, and overcome the current recession.

I do hope that everyone reading the various articles championing such easily-quotable lines as "Life is short; eat dessert first!" take the time to actually observe some children.

We parents are constantly instructed (by the parenting books I rarely have time to read these days) that children need predictability. They thrive on schedules and rules that are consistent. This fact is instinctively true, as any parent coming off of a weekend at Grandma's house or a vacation can tell you. Dessert first actually does throw kids off!

Watching my girls, I am fully inspired to hold on to my inner child, but the whimsy I intend to keep is not of the eternally spontaneous and gratuitously indulgent variety (though I do retain my fair share of the latter!).

No, I'm learning from them to pile each day with a heaping portion of silly.

To throw off the urge to push through every task until it is finished.

To instead put off making the bed just long enough for a rousing game of Ram-stam-stam.

To let unfinished backyard projects take their rightful place at the back of the list, even with impending guests due to celebrate Elle's birthday soon, and instead let my still-one-year-old bury my feet in the sand.

At the moment I'm re-reading Anne of Green Gables. If you haven't picked it up in a few years (or ever), it's well worth your time. From the very beginning, there is Anne, just as she was when I was a kid, over-eager, full of passion for the smallest wildflower or the grandest sunset or an extra half hour with her bosom friend. Anne is all starry-eyed silly. She is all childlike wonder.

I do hope I can hold to all things silly just as intensely as Anne in her gables, Maya at the park, and Elle in her sandbox. Silly makes the simplest day outstanding!