Water and Rocks

She is fascinated with water and rocks.

Her uncle spends part of almost every day plotting out the next family hike to a waterfall, a stream or a lake. Whenever we reach our destination she is animated in the way that little children are, unaware of any world beyond this, unbound by any adult conceptions of restrictions on conduct.

And so we stand there counting to three and then throwing small rocks or sticks into whatever body of water is before us. We watch the splash, we see the circles grow larger and then dissipate, we follow the movements of the tiny objects caught in the swirl of the rushing falls. She will advise whose turn it is to "do it". And if she were making the ultimate decisions, we would "do it" until there was no light left in the sky.

But we must move on and when we do she says "goodbye agua", for she has a friend who speaks Spanish so that is the word that comes to mind for her also. And she is bidding farewell to a companion who has entertained her and made her happy. It is her way of saying thank you.

We have had a lot of rain in recent days and at the bottom of her driveway large puddles recently formed. Her mom made certain she wore her boots as she jumped up and down making the biggest splash she could. And on the walk down the dirt road later that day she hopscotched from puddle to puddle creating little explosions of agua everywhere she went.

Her grandma brought her an old ice tray where she now houses her favorite rocks. On a recent walk she was jamming as many as she could into her pockets. When she ran out of space, she started stuffing them in her socks.

She has made a new best friend in this her temporary residence during a fraught moment in all our lives. She has discovered great pleasures in being outdoors, in running up and down the smallest of hills, in learning how to carefully walk down the steps outside her house, repeating her routine over and over until she has etched it in her mind.

She finds joy in most everything, nothing too inconsequential to be noticed, studied and played with. She listens for the sound of birds. She asks the trucks passing by to toot their horns. She awaits the arrival of the dog next door with breathless anticipation.

If only we could see the world through her eyes, if we could find everything so intriguing, so important, so full of possibilities.

If only we could live our days searching for water. Armed with a pocket full of rocks.