I Have a Little Shadow

Today was like a good apple--crisp, crunchy, cool and refreshing. I sniff the season change and the relief from the heat has me feeling lighter. Not a cloud in sight, but the sun is friendly warm. Isaac (Dylan) and I got home from leaving Benjamin at Joy School and we tumbled out of the car into the playful outdoors. There we found our shadowing doubles enticing us to a good run and jump. Isaac kept trying to catch up to his shadow, but it just kept on moving and moving until I had to wave him away and spoil the fun by going inside.

But the cadence of Robert Louis Stevenson's "My Shadow" stays with me all day thanks to my own once a child memory.

I HAVE a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an India-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.
He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.