See how she grows

A few feverish weeks later, and, following the first lull in our conversation, Lilly quietly asks me to send her my vision for the BIG world.  It is the first pause of breath, the first question mark of many marks, the first return. To the beginning. Again. 

I take it on as a test, to myself and the BIG world. To see if it knows, if I know. I write her my childhood and get to a clearing where there are birds and descriptions of first flights by the young and very old, by artists and all people, with space for children to spend time in their own lives, to be still for a second in the increasing noise of everything spinning around them.

I sail a small craft into headwinds of seeing that are spectacular, and concrete, and wondrous and shared. BIG tells me it will build cities and landscapes of memory in my children as my mother did in me. Deep reservoirs for thought and reflection (and action) without breaking into their world or creating it for them. Just an opening. A way in to fly among the birds with equal parts beauty and spirit, mischief and mayhem. 

I send the co-ordinates of the new world back to Lilly and marvel as her latest images animate in front of me; pencilled children, feet off the ground in wordless motion with tiny cities unfolding along the sides of long legs. Immediately we are galloping atop the Faraway Tree, gathering the crosswinds and shaping them into rooms and characters with edges and definition drawn from the restart.

So with history and detail now firmly creased in our meanderings, we meet in the fold and boldly step off the BIG cliff for a second time. A flight that demands we passenger it, tailor it, respond to it, and continually fuel the mainsail.

Raise the anchor.