Children – Cathy's Blog!

Posted on November 6, 2025November 6, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Connection

Today I took my six year old grandson to school. We were early so we walked to a thick rope swing, a rope thick as his arm, and he climbed up on a broken and deteriorating tree trunk, and swung. He informed me he was an acorn and I was a squirrel. I figured out I was meant to catch him, so I made squirrel sounds, and reached out as he swung one way, and then, another, and, then, in circles.

I, as a squirrel, caught and missed him many times, recognizing my arms were longer proportionally than a squirrel’s arms would be, but then, normally acorns stay in one place.

Then, Grandchild noticed there were six rounds of wood placed next to the stump, and they weren’t there yesterday. Some older children came by, and they, too, were intrigued by the six new circles of wood. Why were they there and who put them there? The conclusion was that they were for taller children who didn’t need to climb up on a stump to catch the end of the rope, or that maybe they were meant to be run along before catching the rope.

Because we had to get to class, we left the children in the discussion, but now, home, I’m with it and with what it is to be an acorn hanging from a swinging branch, and what it is to be a squirrel contemplating acorns and planning for feasting and storage. We’re entering the time of winter as we step on and crunch falling leaves, and so capped like the cap of an acorn, we’re wired to think about surviving when food isn’t plucked simply and easily from trees.

It seemed so simple, this line of rope hanging from a tree. By myself, I might have walked right by it, unaware, unquestioning, but because of immersion with children, and because I’ve been re-reading Winnie the Pooh for the zillionth time, and struggling with The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky for the first, I’m with the minds of children and how they relate and perceive. Aren’t we all meant to meet this world with curiosity and discussion as to possibilities? Aren’t we meant to notice how we connect and transform with the ease of trees, squirrels, acorns, and other beings?

Posted on November 12, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Reception

Yesterday I read an essay by a father, Dave Kim, who was surprised how much his 8 year old son loved the book Heidi published in 1881 by Joanna Spyri. He and his son went to the village where the book is set, Heidiland, and again, his son loved exploring and understanding whether it was a real little girl, or a composite who lived there.

His son was especially enchanted with these words which I remember reading as a child. It’s sunset and Heidi is with her goatherd pal, Peter:

A golden light lay on the grass and flowers, and the rocks above were beginning to shine and glow. All at once she sprang to her feet, “Peter! Peter! Everything is on fire! All the rocks are burning, and the great snow mountain and the sky! … Look at the rocks! Look at the fir trees! Everything, everything is on fire!”

Dave Kim writes: This was one of his son’s favorite moments. “Do rocks actually glow in Switzerland?” his son asked him one morning.

I’m with that as I consider which books my now five year old grandson responds to. One favorite is Ziji, The Puppy Who Learned to Meditate by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Torey Hayden. When he spends the night, we read it before he goes to sleep.

Yesterday a friend was here and pulled a book off a shelf, The Lost Words, by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris. They made a “spell book” to conjure up lost words that were left out of the most recent edition of the Oxford-Junior Dictionary. Words like acorn, bluebell, dandelion, heron, kingfisher, newt and otter were replaced with attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail.

The outdoor and natural were displaced by the indoor and virtual. Most of us interact virtually each day, and this morning I read a poem on-line by Wendell Berry about watching one leaf fall, and I felt that leaf falling through me bringing peace, integrating all the ways we perceive.

Posted on November 2, 2024November 2, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Gathering, Honoring, Sharing

Yesterday I read about and visited a new park in Greenbrae called “Alex’s Playground and Discovery Gardens”. Alex was 7 when nearly five years ago, he died in a horrific and tragic accident at his school.

Several months before he died, he told his mother if anything ever happened to him, he would be a baby hummingbird so that he could be with her.

The day after he died, his mother saw a small hummingbird in their garden who was there for a brief moment and then flew off with a friend.

Recently his mother was attending a show by the Lego sculptor Sean Kenney when she saw a giant hummingbird built with 31,565 Lego bricks, its bill in an equally large Lego flower.

She was able to buy it and now today it sits in a new playground that the family is donating in memory of Alex.

I think of the gazebo in Blackie’s Pasture in Tiburon and the playground in Boyle Park in Mill Valley, both honoring the loss of a child. What a beautiful way to honor the loss, to create a place where children gather, laugh, and play.

The sculpture also is a reminder of the Hummingbird Alliance, a nonprofit the family formed after Alex’s death to push for stronger gate safety rules.

Posted on March 6, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Dreams

The rain continues and my dreams these days are about children, saving the children. I’ve been spending time with my four year old grandson, so perhaps that’s part of it, seeing his innocence and division into “good guys” and “bad guys” and wondering how we might navigate balance and come to peace.

He was into swords for a time, but now he has become Robin Hood so the swords have become a bow and arrow and he wears them on his back tucked into his Robin Hood mask and shirt.

The two of us were at Coyote Point this week, and I was intrigued with this sign. I had no idea how close we came to imitating the East coast with our own Coney Island and Atlantic City. The pungent odor of sewage dumped into the bay saved us from that.

He draws himself in the sand – a perfect likeness

Posted on June 23, 2023June 23, 2023 by Cathy Edgett

CuriOdyssey

Yesterday we spent time with our grandson at CuriOdyssey, an entertaining and educational place for children and adults at Coyote Point Drive in San Mateo. I tried to catch photos of sleek and curious river otters but they were too fast for me. My immersion in time is slow so I went for a focused child, turtles, and bobcats.