Oops!

It’s just after 1:00 p.m. My three-year-old daughter and I make the slow walk from her school back to our home. It is a walk that takes me seven minutes alone, but with her, we take about a half hour. It’s filled with questions: What’s that flower? What’s under that pile of leaves? Why is that man walking? And of course, there is time to say hello to her friend Gustavo, who owns the hardware store down the street.

This is her time. A time to meander and to not be pushed. A space to become fully immersed in that timeless state of childhood that I am sad to admit is not possible in all other parts of her day.

I’m not going out tonight.

We have an invitation. A party under the stars and next to a fire, filled with people we love. But I am tired. So I will stay in instead.

My daughter called to me from her carseat, her voice tinged with sleep. The four-hour drive to our new home in a small Mexican town was overlapping with her naptime, but there was no other way to do it. The road was empty except for us, so I picked her up out of her carseat, wrapped her in my scarf, and nursed her to sleep on my lap. As she dozed in my arms, I watched a dog take off running at top speed along a row of restaurants. Something about the freedom of its movement, unhindered by cages or leashes, stirred some ancient part of me.