Three months shy of her second birthday, the youngest granddaughter toddles after her older siblings and parents eager to be included, copying their every word and deed.
Saturday’s chores included raking up a few wheelbarrows full of leaves. She watched the older children scoop up leaves to toss them into the wheelbarrow. She bent over and gathered up her own tiny fist full of leaves to add to the pile. Daddy grabbed her around the waist, hoisted her up above the wheelbarrow and she added ten leaves to the heap.
With the wheelbarrow filled, he tossed her on top of the pile of the damp leaves along with older children. Held tightly by her little sister, the toddler grinned happily and floated on top of the pile of bright yellow maple leaves as Daddy briskly bumped the wheelbarrow over the ground to the compost heap in the backyard.
On the trip back to the leaf raking party, she saw her little plastic wheelbarrow. She stopped, grabbed it and wheeled it to the leaf raking party.
She didn’t have far to reach down to gather up leaves to fill up the miniature wheelbarrow bed. One scoop from her sister’s arms filled her wheelbarrow, but she wanted to do it herself. She pushed her sister’s leaves aside and loaded the wheelbarrow all by herself.
Then, just like Daddy, she grabbed hold of the plastic wheelbarrow handles and began trudged to the back yard. Others offered to pick up her and the light wheelbarrow and carry both to the pile.
She waved them aside. She wanted to do it all by herself – and she did – oblivious to our snapping shots of her pushing that wheelbarrow through the overgrown grass behind the barn.
At the compost pile, the height of the compost enclosure forced her to relent. Daddy helped her lift the wheelbarrow up. Together they added her golden leaves to the pile.
Satisfied that she had done it all by herself just like the big people in her life, the toddler, accepted a ride back around to the front of the barn. She looked at the rest of the leaves. Picked up a few more, but having done her chores for the day, she happily went inside when her mother came and picked her up.
Slowly, the rest joined her. Big sister pulled out the cookie dough and made tiny cookies for a tea party with the middle sister’s porcelain tea set.
The tea set’s owner did not want to share her dishes with her baby sister. A year and a half with a baby had taught her how quickly toys, dishes, papers, books can break, tear or disintegrate.
Momma came to the rescue and brought out dishes left over from another, now broken, tea set. “This will be the her own tea set,” she said setting down a miniature pitcher, plate and cup.
“Gonna have a tea party,” the baby lisped from her booster seat carefully copying her big sisters.
She might not understand all the intricacies of why the porcelain tea set required extra special care, or what was cute about taking her own wheelbarrow of leaves out to the pile, but she knew she wanted to be just like big people in her life.
Having left the cradle behind, she runs, one tiny baby step at a time, to join the rest of the world.