Evie's poem

Memories of Maryland are swirling around my head,
I keep them like a treasure box.
I remember climbing a high in tree with my friends
and up there in the tree I felt safe.
-poem by Evie

When I read about Evie feeling "safe" in a tree with her friends, I couldn't help but thinking back to the day she and Jasper and Susannah climbed up the tree by the rec center in Frederick. It's a tall pine tree and I stood under it with Jasper and Susannah's moms talking about how we need to just let them climb and how kids need more freedom from their parents these days. Suddenly an object that looked just like Jasper's coat came flying through the air and landed with a loud "thud" on the ground. All three moms suffered a collective heart attack before realizing that Jasper had just thrown down his backpack.

Despite our interpretation of the tree being potentially unsafe, Evie must have felt comforted being up there with her friends, secluded from the world. I think she also felt safe because she was so connected with nature, clinging to the branches of a pine tree. It's a good reminder to me both to allow her to take risks (such as climbing across the tree house, over the roof and down the orange tree to get to our neighbor's house) and also to spend more time in nature. Toby recently wrote in his blog about how our whole family benefits from nature and Evie's poem speaks to that as well.