Sky Pie

When I was sixteenish my dad gave me a birthday card. And a gift, but the card is what I remember because of the good advice inside:

"Dear Jennie,

Always keep your head in the clouds and your feet on the ground.

Love, Dad"

I like it. 'Cause it's a perfect mantra for a practical idealist like me. I like big dreams and high goals. I'm about hitching my wagon to a star. I believe in faith and hope. But I know about work. It satisfies me. And I like the definitions and cooperation reality insists upon.
Back in the days of the blue kitchen and the pink bedroom my dad used to tell me about this dinosaur museum he was wishing into existence. A really amazing one, with the world's longest and tallest ossified mysteries standing proud in galleries bigger than air plane hangers. A museum that was truly about experiential learning, where kids could hear, and see, compare, touch, and play. A place that provided context and truly addressed an audience. A place that set the stage with a trip through a star tunnel. And a program called "Dino-snorz" that let you bring your sleeping bag and dream away under those majestic bones. Pie in the sky kinda stuff. Except one day, not too long after that sixteenish birthday, it came true.
On a recent trip home we visited the North American Museum of Ancient Life, a place where the dino-tales my Daddy told me became concrete; A piece of sky pie served up and tasting sweet. I watched my girls play, touch, learn, enjoy. We splashed and built and organized and fed bunches of beasts in the erosion table. We carefully uncovered dinos in a sand pit. We felt the texture of fossils under our finger tips: ancient plant life, giant lizards, mammoths, turtles the size of one-man submarines. We asked questions. My girls loved it. And I, for the umpteenth time, was proud of my dad. And inspired to eat my own pie in the sky, and teach the girls to do the same, with our feet on the ground and our heads in the clouds.