I am alive!

I run with the children as if I were one of them only bigger and stronger. I trick them with twists and turns and they laugh as they lunge and miss me. Eventually, they are holding me around my middle as we all fall down in a happy heap. Red cheeks / cold grass. I am a winter mother. And I love to be strong and full of exuberance. I love to run and rumble. To play! Oh, this magnificent mammalian play!  The limbs move. The blood moves. The breath moves. The energy of it all, dancing from the dirt earth through the body and up to the gray wool sky. I am alive! I am alive.