Some things never change...

It's really beautiful to see that no matter how "hard" and "cold" the world gets some things will forever remain the same.

Today was a beautiful sun shiny, cool day, so while playing with my little cousin at his house, he decided he wanted to go to the nearby park. So we rode over and I placed our bikes by a tree at the entrance of the park. I had second and and third thoughts about leaving our stuff by the tree, but told myself that nothing should happen. There was a group of three near teenage boys that entered the park right before us that I felt wanted to keep my eye on. Just to make sure. Sometimes teenagers in a park isn't a good thing. After a little while I realized these boys seemed to have genuinely come to enjoy the park and nothing more. So I let that go and thought it was particularly refreshing....here they were 11-13 year olds coming to a park and asking for each other's help with the swings.

There was a grandmother there crocheting a Christmas tree skirt while watching her two granddaughters play. Of course I had to offer that I crochet a few things. She seemed surprised. Then we began making small talk about crochet and the park...you know two things that naturally go together. I made the comment that although there was no trashcan out there the park seemed to be kept up very well and she agreed.

I pushed my cousin on the swing until he joked that I'd pushed him high enough and he was getting "sand sick." Then we slid down a jumbo sized slide and played in the sand a lot. He used his imagination with is building pretending he was making a Superdome and a volcano. He seems to need to turn everything into a contest though, but I guess that's just his nature... he said repeatedly, "my [insert sand creation here] is bigger than yours!".

A little girl was passing behind her mother and her mother's friend. She started playing in the park as her party passed. When she came over to the slide she stopped to play in the sand with us. I made small kid talk asking her what she was making and praising it. It was fun.

In the end my cousin and I rode home, but I felt compelled for some reason. Compelled that no matter what (probably even where) kids will be kids. Even though it is said that kids these days are loosing touch with what makes them kids, apparently some are still in touch with their kid-ness. For some reason that makes me feel great. Perhaps because whenever I have kids of my own, I'd love for them to go through a genuine kid phase and not feel like they need to harden for the world.

On a side note I thoroughly enjoyed riding that bike. It brought back great feelings of childhood...the wind blowing through my hair, putting my feet up on the handle bars...good times. I rode that bike for at least 2 hours with a few breaks in between. It was great.