Chalk on the Walk

I remember walking around our neighborhood the first summer after we moved in. As I wound my way down the sidewalk, I'd encounter new masterpieces at each step. Roughly sketched in colorful pastels and joyfully filled in with broad scribbles, each chalk drawing enticed me, drawing me in. Much like one of my favorite scenes in Mary Poppins, I found myself desperate to jump inside the neighborhood children's imaginations and explore all the happiness within.

And yet, in those days, it seemed impossible that our own walk would ever be brightly colored with drawings created by jubilant little hands, that hand-prints made of powdery dust would grace my hallway, that "Mommy draw, too?" would become a query so regular it borders on mundane.

But there is nothing ordinary at all about the way our sidewalk looks after a sunny spring weekend, after Lily has demanded that we write her name over and over, after the older girls have sketched numerous hopscotch courts, after once-new pieces of chalk are ground down to just nubs. There is so much joy in each line and circle, each smiley face and balloon, each letter that spells out the name of another friend who stopped by to say hello at some point in the weekend.

Remember Mary Poppins' ability to jump into that drawing? It seems that I have finally jumped into one of my own--and I have no plans to leave anytime soon.