Summertime brings free concerts in the park near our home. As the only empty-nesters on our cul-de-sac, my husband and I often ride bikes there with our neighbors and their children. We settle on our blankets and enjoy the music, but I have the most fun watching the kids flitting around us like beautiful butterflies.

Through a maze of lawn chairs and coolers, they run, dance, jump, and chase each other with wild abandon. I vaguely recall inhabiting a body that moved with so much energy and freedom.

My eyes get misty behind sunglasses as I picture my own children at that age, so happy and carefree. I want to whisper in the ears of the young parents, “Enjoy this easy-breezy time, this pure-sweet time, this time before they feel the too-rough fingers of the world.”

I say a silent prayer for those children in the park ~ a heartfelt wish that each and every one will grow up safe and strong and never lose the natural innocence and joy that makes a laughing kid suddenly turn a cartwheel in the summer grass.

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” ~George Bernard Shaw

Think On These Things ~ Alicia