I woke up today feeling a bit unpleasent, a little sad, discouraged, a bit disgruntled and without the magic feeling I usually feel rising out of my bed and feeling the coming beauty of the day. Perhaps it was the knowledge that today I would be proctoring a test rather than teaching. I hopped in my car and as I crossed the 40th street bridge, I caught glimpse of this sky. Man was it beautiful. It wasn't just the usual changing of color or certain shape of the clouds, it was the movement and the particular lighting. There was almost this visible pink pathway that gradually became threaded with golden light until you could see this small pocket where it looked like a whimsical passageway had opened in the sky. 

Obviously I kept my eyes on the road, but that passageway, for miles, was in sight. All around that pathway contained darker clouds. A peculiar contrast. And I began to think of circumstances, things in life that we cannot change, places in our lives where we feel that golden thread is absent. And I realized that all of life is part of that pink and goldish passageway twirling across the sky. We just have to find those gold threads, lead ourselves towards our dreams and ignore the clouds that distract us from the glory of His path. 

I was struck by both the golden pathway and the darkened pathway within just an hour of eachother. The darkened pathway was watching my kids take a three hour paper and pencil test. They worked so hard. So dilligently. But I could not help but think about those golden threads lacking. Their faces were exhausted, worn and drawn. Deep down they knew this wasn't right, but they were working through it anyways. Trying so hard to knit their clouds with specks of gold from their very souls. 

At the end of the day, it was beautiful out. And I wanted them to feel that renewed pathway I feel every time I teach a creative lesson, every time we discuss important life events, every time we learn about one another, we travel those pink clouds towards the highway to heaven. We went outside the last 10 minutes of the day to embrace the glory of the skies. I watched every child in my class cry out multiple times, "Mrs. Amoscato watch me play!" "Mrs. Amoscato watch this trick!" "Mrs. Amoscato watch me do the monkey bars." 

How quickly we forget that a child's kingdom is the kingdom of play. And that allowance of freedom and creativity brings us closer to that pinkish pathway filled with the golden specks of understanding that childhood is precious. Childhood, when allowed is heaven. The words are synonymous.