Olive My Love

On the cusp of childhood and an evolution into someone beyond my reach, who can cartwheel down a mountain slope and land in scree with a smile on her face.

My girl who is joining the Junior Mount Marathon Race, competing against girls and boys age seven to seventeen. Who climbs up the cliff with ease. Feels proud of the scrapes on her knees.

Eight-years bold, she walks on her hands across our gravel yard, climbs our Spruce and Hemlock trees, scales our scaffolding to the second floor, without looking down.

I raise my hands to catch her but she's climbing beyond my scope, asking bigger questions, dreaming wider views.

May she retain her wildness as she develops, hold her convictions as she grows, keep her soft brave heart wherever she goes.

May social structures crumble at her feet, as she remains free to be--free to choose, to speak, to stand, to growl, to scream, to cry, to love, to rejoice, however she pleases.

May her body belong to her without comment.

May she define her own pleasure, her own language, her own back road through this world of brier patches and feather beds, razor blades and warm embraces.

Her name is not in the title of this blog, a story that began before I imagined another being taking hold of my heart; and yet Olive's hand-prints grace every key, she is part Nick, part me, all her, and Elias's only sibling, full of maple syrup and porcupine quills.

Part assistant, part provocateur, all guts, with a creative swirl, turning decaying logs into dessert stores, brush piles into elevator factories, trees into rooms of her own.

Her forest her home.

She dances across wet rocks and laughs with bald eagles. Plants her own Fireweed garden next to mine, caring for what I discard, and draws sea otters with sea stars in her top bunk at bedtime. She defies the clock, growing more inquisitive as the long days tick past ten.

"When can I snuggle with you?" she asked last night, my bed half-empty with Nick away again.

"Come on in," I said, and as she rested her soft head against my shoulder, I found myself thinking how lucky am I to be her mother.

My forest-mountain-beach girl, all of my love: Olive.