A Walk With Rachel

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It seems I hardly spend much time with Rachel. If I’m going out somewhere, it’s usually the boys who come with me, and mostly Daniel.

So, how surprised was I when I suggested she come out for a walk with me, and she didn’t go absolutely nuts. Normally, such an innocuous request would be met with a fit of hysterics, making it pointless to even bother dragging her out the front door. But on Sunday, she placidly nodded her head and said, “Yeah, it’d be nice to get some fresh air.” Then wandered off to get her coat.

Normally, I take a fairly long walk out round the fields where we live, so I took her in that direction. We rambled down the road, intermittently chatting and sometimes falling into silence. Rach was busily inspecting the changes in the countryside because of the impending winter – I showed her the apple trees where the crab apples were rotting on the ground where they’d fallen weeks ago.

She spent an inordinate amount of time ripping ivy leaves from the trees and chucking them at me, but was a little more intrigued when we took a walk down to the old railway tracks. We had a nosey around underneath the bridge and she spent some time craning her neck to see further up the tracks.

Later, when we were walking back into town, she sweet-talked me into an impromptu trip to the park, where she played until the threat of rain became too great. Watching her play in the park reminded me of the times I took her to the park as a baby, pushing her on the swings and counting to 10 each time, her giggling all the time. And now, she’s more than half my height, looking up at me with smiling brown eyes and chatting away easily.

I like to try and spend a little one-on-one time with each of the kids now and again. Sometimes when they’re all together, they’re frenzied, noisy and it’s impossible to get them to sit still long enough to chat to. When you get them seperated from the pack, you get a chance to get to know them, and it’s surprising some of the stuff they’ll chat about – friends, school, things that are going on within the family.

Does anybody else do this kind of thing?