The Nursery Walk

I showed you the moon and the stars on the nursery walk.

We talked about the blossom, the changing leaves on the trees, the passing of the seasons. We counted the dogs and waved hello to Primrose the little yellow car. Eight minutes of precious time together at the beginning and the end of the working day.

We noticed numbers on doors and lampposts, greeted bus drivers and counted how many buses we saw on each walk.

We sang so many songs on the nursery walk, the wheels on the bus and the ABC song, your small, high voice mixing up the words and making my heart squeeze with love for you. We chatted about your day, I heard who you played with and what you had eaten, whether you had hurt your knee in the pre-school garden. Packing a day’s worth of conversation in on the nursery walk.

Later, you would walk or scoot and diversions would be taken. A mountain of leaves begging to be sat on, they came up to your chest. Picking up flowers which had fallen to the pavement, plucking red leaves to make a picture and choosing a really good stick or a super-shiny conker to carry home.

Blossom on trees, a summertime breeze, and crunching along on crisp brown leaves. Heading home down the Gruffalo trail, a short wooded path at the bottom of the park that takes us close to home. Climbing a tree and scoffing a blackberry, picking dandelions and blowing the clocks. A mini-adventure on our nursery walk.

Gifts of pasta necklaces and glitter-strewn pictures were given, birthday cakes were eaten and tantrums were thrown. Love, life and drama all packed into that brief walk.

Taking the hard route, pushing up-hill just so we could see the fairy house and marvel at the displays that they put outside their little door embedded into the base of a tree. From Spring flowers and Easter eggs to Hallowe’en decor and Christmas tinsel. Intense discussions would follow about why the fairies only came out at night, why we couldn’t see them now.

I walked home in the dark on our nursery walk, pushing your pushchair, heavy with guilt at being apart from you all day, knowing you were tired and grumpy and things would be rough when we got home. We looked up at the sky and saw “the moon mummy!” and a scattering of stars. We talked about how beautiful they were, how far away the moon was and how it changed shape slowly, each evening.

The night sky, deep blue and beautiful, when I showed you the moon and the stars on our nursery walk.

Image credit: Alison McGarragh-Murphy