Robbi and the kids are back from the lake. In an instant, a week’s worth of quiet and tranquility was replaced by a raucous ocean of squalor and noise.
And I couldn’t be happier.
While Robbi caught up on her email, the kids and I went walking tonight. To Wilmer park. We stopped in the gazebo for a moment.
And then proceeded to the waterfront. Our intention was to gaze pensively at the river, admiring its evening beauty.
But then Alden “got other ideas,” and whispered them impishly to Kato.
The idea involved crossing that important line between “looking at” and “wading in.”
Once crossed, this line becomes next to worthless, especially when fresh mud is on hand for squishing between one’s toes.
And when your daughter hands you her favorite pink hat and says, “Here, Papa, I don’t want this to get wet,” you know that the line is an imaginary line and your sense of paternal control equally so.
Suddenly, the river was a river, not a thing to look at, but a place to splash and dunk and laugh as the sun set over Chestertown.
