Sometime this summer, our two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Jessie, started running. Sure, she’d scooted around before and even joined in a few mad dashes at the playground with her big brother, William. But this was different. This summer she started, of her own volition and without warning, to bolt.

"She was like a butterfly fluttering low over the sidewalk, a three-foot-tall vision of determination and joy."

The first time it happened, we were on our way to the grocery store. One minute, she was holding my hand, and the next she was tearing away from me. Her long legs and torso, topped with a tangled mop of curly blond hair, just took off. She kept her arms pinned to her sides, her hands in tight little fists, and her chin pressed down so that the only moving parts of her were her legs. But, boy, did those legs move. She was like a butterfly fluttering low over the sidewalk, a three-foot-tall vision of determination and joy.

I remember that feeling. I grew up with two big brothers in a cul de sac surrounded by woods and ponds and wide open fields. I spent my childhood in perpetual motion, skateboarding down any hill, big or small, running through woods as branches whipped my cheeks and scraped my legs, climbing and falling from trees. Every evening, I’d arrive home for dinner ruddy-cheeked and breathless. It wasn’t until about seventh grade, when I discovered make-up and Seventeen, General Hospital and curling irons, that I stopped running and climbing and scraping my knees. I don’t remember when exactly my life as a tom boy gave way to my incarnation as a preening teenager, but at some point, I became more polite, more poised, more careful. And I think it was then that I lost hold of pure joy.

"What I would give to be a kid in those woods again just for an afternoon, when time didn’t matter and no one was counting on me."

Now 40, I still have some tom boy in me, and joy does break through when I tap it. But what I would give to be a kid in those woods again just for an afternoon, when time didn’t matter and no one was counting on me for much of anything other than to show up for dinner and brush my teeth before bed.

Last week, my husband Michael, William, Jessie, and I were walking home from getting ice cream to celebrate William’s first day of Kindergarten. We crossed onto our block, a row of townhouses lined with trees, and Jessie let go of my hand and dashed down the brick sidewalk. Her legs, in neon green biker-style shorts, pumped like mini-pistons, her arms tight by her sides, her fists clenched, head down. After a few yards, I heard her yell, “Come on, Mama! Don’t you want to run with me?”

I did.

With my hands gripping the handles of the stroller, empty now but for the gallon of milk we’d picked up at the grocery store, I strode behind her. My legs were clumsy at first but soon gathered speed as I jogged down the sidewalk beside her. By the time we got to our door, we were both breathless.

Katherine Ozment is a Glam Family contributing editor, and a freelance writer working on her first book. Her essays about motherhood have been widely published and can be found at www.katherineozment.com. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and two kids.