Good Play

A few, a very few, of the photos "found" on my camera.

Do you know Robert Louis Stevenson's poem "A Good Play?" My kids pick other poems from A Child's Garden of Verses to memorize, though I push for that one.  Maybe it's because the poem reminds me of the hours I spent playing on the stairs as a child. They were old, dangerous stairs, that wrapped around a corner and the treads narrowed to an inch at one end, perfectly suited for building doll houses on the stairs.

"We built a ship upon the stairs

All made of the back-bedroom chairs,

...

We sailed along for days and days,

And had the very best of plays;"

Quintessential childhood is that Good Play that extends through any number of days, always being added to and changing, and compulsively played. That's what my kids have been doing here these past few weeks. First train tracks for days, then Playmobile for days and days, then animals, then Legos. Pressed by the need for convenience they moved all those toy sets out of the bedroom to the living room and I endured it knowing they were having a Good Play. Pressed by the need for order and a little beauty, we moved a dresser into the living room (to hold the toys,of course) and reorganized all the furniture.

This morning they are all in the living room before breakfast, sun shining bright through the curtains, organizing all those dresser drawers. And arguing, just a little; another quintessential activity of childhood.