girl, airborne

See up there? It's very high up in the air. It's actually in the process of stopping spinning and coming back down to earth. Because it didn't occur to me to get out the phone and take a picture while my heart was in my mouth and my child was flying the frinedly skies. Olivia got all excited about this new piece of equipment at the funfair. Her dad promised to come back and go on with her, but came home and paled confessed there was no way he could, with vertiginious fear in his eyes.

Me and the kids went back down on the last day of the fair and she begged and begged to go by herself. And I craned my neck at it, and thought about my little girl spinning in the air so high of the ground, and I said, no, I can't let you do it, and next year, and ugh, what are you thinking you'll feel sick and so will I and so on, and she kept denying it all, and finally I realised that even if I or someone else was up there with her, if her swing came lose and she fell out, it's not like there's anything anyone could do, and I'd probably be better off breaking her fall on the ground.

So off we went, to get her on - and the fairground guy gestured in horror at Bodhi and shook his head, and I said, Fuck no! It's bad enough her going! - and he clutched his chest in relief :)

And up she skipped, with a grin a mile wide, to be strapped into the seat that looked impossibly big for her, feet dangling, grin in place.

And up it went, something like twenty feet in the air, and it spun, and my heart left my ribcage as she whirled in the air and I watched my baby fly. You could see her grin from that high up in the air.

And when she got down, she came bouncing and scrambling across the grass, eyes alight and laughing widely, elated and delighted and ever so slightly queasy and WANTING TO GO AGAIN!!

Horror and daredevilling. We think she gets it from the MIL, maybe, it certainly isn't from me and her dad.