In the Air

The children are restless.

This has been a cold winter. For St. Louis. Not that we don’t know cold, but our winters are usually tempered by sunshine, warm breezes, and walks through the park. This year, we’ve been trapped. Since Christmas. In my house we’ve been huddled around a space-heater and cradling bowls of soup. Ian doesn’t like soup.

A brick home built in 1922 may seem charming, but only in the summer.

Yesterday the weatherman said sixty degrees; we reached sixty-one. Wednesday night is church night, which means choir for me, children’s choir for Kelly, and catechism for Ian. And for dozens upon dozens of other babies, toddlers, tikes, and teenagers.

At quarter-to-eight, when classes ended and rehearsals stopped, the children escaped. They ran, coats held in parents’ arms, across the church sidewalks and lawn, up stairs and down stairs and up stairs, around trees and walls. Their voices ran ahead, bounced off neighborhood homes and cars, the echoes telling them, not where to go, but that they could go anywhere.

Ian dashed in front of us, ten…fifteen…twenty feet away. He fell on his face, and then ran farther.

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