My Beautiful Wickedness

I cannot compete with a totally unsupervised ten-year-old girl with a jumprope, a swingset, and a hose. I can see my Kid — she’s only about 15 yards away in the neighbor’s yard — and I know that she’s having fun and is safe (if horribly muddy). She’s been hanging out with the three kids (10, 13, 15) for the second day in a row. They are out first thing in the morning to last bit of light at night. The screen door bangs thirty times an hour as Kid retrieves garden spades, binoculars, Kool-aid, popsicles, a tarp (for slip-n-slide), bugspray…

They play tag. They make forts. They do science experiments and take apart alarm clocks and toasters. They turn cartwheels and draw chalk drawings. They get dirty, get clean, play board games in the shade of a tree. They discuss the similarities between Christianity and Islam, read aloud from the children’s Iliad, reenact Macbeth, dance to Bob Marley.

It sounds fun. It is fun.

I just don’t have to want to leave home with Kid in tow to get a little face time with her.