And sometimes...

...little is needed, in the way of frame, or conceit, or external effort. Last night, at 7:30, Yo-Yo Ma played Bach's cello suites on our speakers as L., Cleo and I finished a round of Crazy Eights and then slowly shuffled upstairs, where we brushed and flossed Cleo's teeth, quietly ushered her into a pull-up, and then read a handsomely illustrated version of Rapunzel. The clear, resonant intelligence of Bach; the alert, sensitive hands of Yo-Yo; the slowly melting body of Cleo, losing consciousness, beside me. What larger narrative is needed?

And so, too, in West Virginia over the weekend. During a walk in the woods with Cleo's classmate Jasper and his family, we came across two beams, laid across a creek bed. Balance beams! And so the children traversed, in various fashions and at varied paces, as we watched, sympathetically swaying our own bodies as they balanced, and re-balanced, themselves. They seemed both young and old, at once - but above all, they seemed right, engaged in a basic challenge that has interested kids for generations, if not centuries.

Play on, cello. Climb on, children.