It started out with Maisy and Blues Clues, and got better from there

All we have to do is follow the river, she suggests. She is my niece, and we are walking the banks of the Huntington River, trying to get to a spot where we can get our toes wet. But walking the banks is not exactly true because you cannot walk this river's banks. What we are really doing is following a path that has taken us from atop the river gorge and then across and down, and across some more, and then down, down, down to where the waterfalls have fallen and rapids have swirled through their fury, and the water is calm again. Our path is a narrow foot path that takes us over rocks covered with moss, and across the pine needle floor of the woods, winding us this way and that. We navigate fallen logs, where we lean for balance on boulders that are three times our height. (My cute leather sandals that I bought at Foley's last year are hardly appropriate shoes for this trek, but I make it.) When we do reach calm water, we take our shoes off and splash our feet through the shock of cold. We wade a bit, take loads of photos. I skip stones across the water and teach her how to hold the stone just right, how to aim to skim it across the water's surface so that it catches just so, and lunges forward again. She tosses one in. Kerplunk. It might take some practice.



Returning to the house, we are greeted by the girls. They are very busy with bubbles and their cars and their sand box, a found stick, a discovered blade of grass. The spoken words are DeeeeeeeeeeeeeDee, and I drive, and, push us again Daddy.

I don't get many days like this, days with my niece, with my godchild, with me dearest friend. Days with babies and forests, waterfalls and skimming stones, bubbles and books and sandboxes. I'm sure that if I'm even remotely conscious when I'm leaving this world, and the best of my life flashes before me, this day will be one that I see.