Go For It, Kiddos!

Not only the season of popsicles and swimming, summer for 11-year-olds is truly Trampoline Season. About a month before my daughter’s birthday, I inquired at a local on-line forum if anyone had a trampoline no longer in use. Almost immediately, a grandfather at my daughter’s school located a trampoline in a nearby town. And then, as back-up, a few more, too.

The gift was an utter surprise to my daughter, and brought her such joy it made me happy, too.

Up above the garden, behind the burgeoning forest of asparagus and weeds, elecampane already massing into its giant summer growth, comes the squeak squeak of trampoline springs, the children launching themselves off our buggy bit of Vermont into their kid version of the wild blue yonder.

There is a place where the sidewalk ends

and before the street begins,

and there the grass grows soft and white,

and there the sun burns crimson bright…

… the children, they mark, and the children, they know,

the place where the sidewalk ends.

– Shel Silverstein, “Where the Sidewalk Ends”

West Woodbury, Vermont