An Open Place

Children are wise. They know it is essential to find openings in family celebrations, to escape the crowded atmosphere and seek a place where air is moving freely and the sun shines down through branches of old trees to create patterns on the grass. They know that running wildly in pursuit of a soccer ball gives them a reason to spend time with comrades without entanglement or conflict. They shout for joy as they jostle for the ball, but no one really cares who has the ball.
 
I, too, have stolen away from the world of post-Thanksgiving dinner and responsible adults. My camera gives me the excuse to witness and participate in the ambience of children at play. This younger generation have instinctively found the very spot where sixty years ago my own generation played. My ghostly girl-child self, my siblings and my cousins seem to run with them. The game may be a different sort of game (We played croquet, badminton, or possibly re-enacted a circus we had seen in New Orleans the summer before.), but it is all the same. Time overlaps for just a little while, and I run free.