(Just a quick paragraph I wrote today from my novel-in-progress.  Kind of like the images it conjures up for me.)

It was only a half day, the last day of school of my third grade year.  We had early dismissal and as we ran out the doors into the early afternoon sunlight, a strong wind kicked up out of the west and blew thousands of helicopter seeds off of the gigantic maple tree that bordered State Street.  They filled the early afternoon sky, some travelling hundreds of feet as they silently took flight, spinning and whirling, landing on the asphalt of the playground and the dark green and freshly mown grass of the neighboring lawns.  And we all ran, all the kids from the old grade school, as if we were helicopter seeds, too, set free from the walls of the school by the warm June wind into the early summer air that was never before and would never again be as pure and clean as it was at that moment.  It was the most perfect expression of pure freedom I’ve ever known, the helicopter seeds and we children, none of us caring about where we’d end up when we finally landed, just lost in release and flight, happy to go wherever the warm wind sent us.