We were all sitting on the steps of the school on a Saturday, watching afternoon walkers stroll by in front of us. Rhenny and Daisy were the last ones left after the field trip, but I had already dismissed them to go home. They decided on their own to sit and wait with me for my coworker to arrive.

So, we sat and I listened to History assignments and Saturday night plans and then Daisy said, “Do you know daisy is a flower?” I think Rhenny was still talking on my right about his high school aspirations, but I turned to Daisy and just nodded. Her face got especially pleasant, “My mom told it to me this morning. It’s pretty cool, right?”

And then she looked up and said she wished she could fly.

Yes, Daisy. Let’s make plans to fly together sometime and soon. Middle school is this kind of age – where discoveries and dreams trip over one another, jumbling affections and plans and words when you’re sitting on the school steps with your counselor.

Discoveries and dreams are familiar things to me and one of the many reasons why I am mostly a middle school student inside my mostly adult skin.

I do know that daisies are flowers, but I forgot to wonder at them the way Daisy did when she told me what she had just learned. I forgot daisies could be discovered for the first time. Her joy in discovery was deeper because seemed to claim some of that wonder for herself, in her name – like she was proud her name could bloom.

I got pulled in to her wonder and pulled in to the bloom right as she looked up at a moving flock of birds and said she wished she could fly.

The whimsical dream chased the heels of her discovery before my heart could catch up. So, my eyes flew up just above the tree branches to catch the fluttering wings of her inspiration.

“Why would you want to fly, Daisy?”

“Because the air under me and because I could see everything.”

Mmm, good reasons both. Because air would push up beneath her in flight to buoy her forward motion and suspend her in beautiful rebellion against gravity. The air under her would lift her above eye level to a different perspective.

Yes, Daisy, let’s go flying sometime.

I will go with you if I can drop the weight of this adult skin. I want to feel the air under me and see everything, too.