Driving Adahlia to her preschool this morning… (we typically walk or she rides her bike, and it would’ve been fabulous cool-but-sunny winter weather for that but we’ve been sleeping in and class had already started… not that anyone really cares because there’s not exactly an intense curriculum, but still…)

… she gazes out the windows, first one side, then another.  We’re moving pretty fast.  

“Is it almost nighttime?” She asks.

“No, see the sun there? It’s coming up.  We are headed east.  When we see the sun this way we know it’s morning time.  When it’s close to nighttime it’ll be behind us – that way – and then we know it’s almost night.”

“The sun is going higher and higher?” She asks.

“Yes, it goes all the way over our heads, and makes the day warmer.”

Adahlia is pensive. I take a quick right turn.  We have to go around a big park.

“This place might be crazy!” Adahlia says.  I glance in the rear view and she is looking out the windows, her head on a swivel, taking in trees, buildings, people, buses, and cars. “This place might be Huge!”

I laugh, passing a bus loading up passengers.  “It is pretty crazy! You mean Earth?”

“This place might be HUGE!” Adahlia repeats, raising her arms above her head in a sweeping arm gesture. I make another rolling stop for the next right turn – we’re almost there.

“It is huge, baby,” I affirm.  “There’s so much to see here.”

Blinkers left then right, I slow and arc onto Terry Street.  Our car’s momentum carries up the preschool driveway.  

“I want to live in all these houses,” Adahlia announces.

I open the door, unbuckle her, and help her out of the car.  She looks at the row of craftsman houses, some of which are homes and others have been converted to businesses, like her preschool.

“I want to live in all these houses,” she repeats.

I giggle.  “I know, I enthuse, “there’s so much to experience!”  

I reflect for an instant on this little mirror by my side.  When I was little, not much older than her, I thought it unfair that we had to pick a future.  I wanted to be so many things. I did not want to have to choose, to be locked into anything.  I wanted to experience many careers and lives.  
When I break my reverie, I acknowledge the face value of her words.  “We will live in many houses, love… when we don’t have to do so many blood transfusions, we will travel lots and lots and live in many, many houses.”
Adahlia holds my hand as we walk up the front steps.  “All these houses,” she repeats.

And this time, I allow myself to bask in the depths of the message.

I want to live in all these houses.

We start out unafraid of death, unattached to our particular lives, ready and eager in a state of wonder to live.  To experience. No experience is necessarily better than the others. They are all different, all valuable. All wonderous.  All adventure.

Then, at some point, we identify with the body we live in and the stories it experiences.  At this point, we do one of two (or a combination of) things:  We reject the current body, becoming ashamed or unhappy in it because it has become a storehouse of trauma, or we become too attached to the current body (and life) and lose perspective on the validity and beauty of living and seeing from a different set of eyes.

We become lost in one story, the story of this one lifetime, and lose sight of the possibility, grandeur, and truth of the others, especially when woven all together.

I want to live in all these houses.

Yes, yes I do.

I want to live in all these houses.

So says the Spirit of the Body.